In 2010, a Japanese kindergarten teacher named Atsuko Sato posted photos of her rescue Shiba Inu, Kabosu, on her personal blog. One photo captured Kabosu sitting on a couch with her eyebrows raised in an expression of polite confusion. Three years later, that single photo — paired with multicolored Comic Sans captions in broken English (“such wow,” “much amaze,” “very dog”) — became the Doge meme.
Kabosu was rescued from a puppy mill as an adult dog. Sato never expected her dog to become a global icon. When Dogecoin launched in 2013, it put Kabosu’s face on a cryptocurrency worth billions. Kabosu passed away peacefully in May 2024 at age 18, having lived long enough to see her image etched into internet and financial history.
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