A dog so beloved on this SC campus, there is now a rainbow bridge in her honor. Here’s her story
She’s been gone for more than a year, but the golden retriever-bassett hound mix named Riley lives on in the form of a rainbow bridge on the Furman University campus near Greenville, South Carolina.
Riley, with eyes described as soulful and a gentle nature, was a fixture on campus, where her owners Dave and Kathy Knox walked her most every day, Furman magazine reported.
Students stopped to pet her. Groups of visitors marveled.
She was a trained therapy dog, who visited Alzheimer’s patients in a nursing home and children during library reading time.
The Knoxes got her after their son Jeff, a Furman graduate, was hit by a truck as he tried to stop a roommate from driving drunk. He was in a coma, with crushed bones in his face and a collapsed lung when a worker at an animal shelter where Jeff volunteered sent Cassie, a therapy golden retriever, to his room.
For the first time in three months, he moved when his mom put his hand on Cassie, Furman magazine reported.
He recovered and the Knox family wanted a therapy dog. Enter Riley, who was about a year old when they found her in a shelter.
Over a decade, she became a therapy dog to Furman students stressing over tests and papers or missing pets back home.
Dave Knox told Furman magazine he wanted to memorialize Riley with a rainbow bridge like one at Lake Lure, where pet owners attached collars and tags.
Built in 2022, it was designed by artist Amy Wald, but destroyed by Hurricane Helene in 2024.
It has since been rebuilt.
The bridge was inspired by the poem Rainbow Bridge about beloved pets crossing over when they die, becoming whole and waiting on the other side to be reunited with their owners.
It was written by Scottish artist Edna Clyne-Rekhy in 1959 to mourn the death of her dog, Major.
The Knoxes hoped Riley’s Rainbow bridge will offer the same sort of comfort as the one at Lake Lure.
“Memorialize Riley and give something back by letting her continue to do her therapy, even though she’s no longer with us,” Dave Knox, retired radiation therapy physicist, told Furman magazine.
Kathy Knox is a retired elementary school teacher.
The bridge, which was painted earlier this month by students, is located in between residential buildings in the North Village on campus.
Furman has a number of other distinctive structures including the Bell Tower beside Furman Lake, the Thoreau cabin replica and Place of Peace, an Asian garden water feature and a temple that was dismantled in Japan and reassembled on campus.
The 750-acre campus also includes a planetarium, 13 miles of paved walking trails, and an 18-hole golf course.
This story was originally published April 22, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "A dog so beloved on this SC campus, there is now a rainbow bridge in her honor. Here’s her story."