For the past 14 years, you’d be hard-pressed to find the corner of the internet not using the doge meme template. Sadly the dog behind the meme, Kabosu, passed away this morning, her owner confirmed.
“She quietly passed away as if asleep while I caressed her,” Owner Atsuko Sato wrote on her blog. “I think Kabo-chan was the happiest dog in the world. And I was the happiest owner.”
The Birth of Doge
Sato rescued Kabosu from a puppy mill where she was set to be euthanized in 2008. In 2010, she took a picture of her beloved dog crossing her paws on the sofa that she posted to her blog. An icon was born, and the Shiba Inu quickly became a classic meme format. Doge memes typically use simple and broken English to reveal the inner thoughts of Kabosu and other doges.
Eventually, this popularity led her to become an NFT digital artwork that sold for $4 million. She also inspired Dogecoin, which is now the eighth-most valuable cryptocurrency. Billionaire Elon Musk sent its value soaring by decreeing it “the people’s crypto.” He even briefly changed the X (formally Twitter) logo to Kabosu’s face in 2023.
Her fan base was so dedicated that it raised $100,000 to build a statue of Kabosu and her sofa. The effort was led by Own The Doge, a crypto organization that is clearly VERY dedicated to the meme. It was unveiled in a park in Sakura, Japan in November of 2023
Kabosu has unfortunately been suffering from both leukemia and liver disease since 2022. Our thoughts are with Sato and her fans at this time.
