By Steve Klamkin WPRO News

Rhode Island State Police have a new K-9, but unlike their many other police dogs Gus is a soft, cuddly comfort dog.

Just ten weeks old, Gus is a Labradoodle, snowy white, adopted from a breeder in Massachusetts, and who’s job after a year of obedience and comfort dog training is to assist the department’s Special Victims Unit in the “soft interview”, during investigations with witnesses and victims in difficult cases, such as sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, child molestation, labor and sex trafficking.

“We said to ourselves, how can we better investigate these crimes, but how can we make this less traumatic for the victims of these crimes, which is very important to us,” said State Police Major Robert Creamer.

“K-9 Gus will be there, the victim can think of K-9 Gus, hopefully bring that level of stress and anxiety down and help us to better investigate,” said Detective Sergeant Heather Palumbo of the Special Victims Unit.

For the next year, Gus will be learning basic obedience as a comfort-dog-in-training and will also be used for community outreach.

Gus and his handler, Detective Jared Andrews met the media at State Police headquarters in Scituate Friday, just two weeks after he was acquired by the Department, where is already a hit.

“Because we have some pretty strong detectives upstairs and troopers downstairs who come up and see him, and they all melt the second they see Gus,” said Creamer.

In addition to comforting victims and witnesses, Gus will also be counted upon to help comfort police themselves, and to take part in community outreach efforts.

State Police have 18 dogs assigned to different missions, but Gus is the first comfort dog in the department’s history.