Kabosu, a shiba inu with a “much wow” expression that launched millions of memes and served as the inspiration for Dogecoin, has died at the age of 18 years old.
The Japanese pup, who’d been battling leukaemia and liver disease, “fell into a deep sleep” Friday morning at home in Sakura, a city east of Tokyo, and she did not wake up, her owner, Atsuko Sato wrote in a blog post.
“Outside the window, birds were singing on a beautiful morning. As I was touching her, she gently passed away,” wrote Sato, who works as a kindergarten teacher. “I think she was the happiest dog in the world. That makes me the happiest owner in the world.”
Kabosu was sent to an animal shelter along with a group of shibas after their breeder went out of business. In 2008, she was adopted by Sato, who enjoyed snapping photos of her new canine companion and sharing them online. One image in particular, featuring Kabosu with her paws folded and a curious but bemused look on her face, started to spread online back in 2010. Netizens often took to pairing the picture with grammatically incorrect two-word phrases like “very amaze” and “such excite.” The most common caption, typically spelled out in the relentlessly mocked Comic Sans font, is “much wow.”
It came to be known as the “doge meme.”
Kabosu went on to become the face of alternative cryptocurrency Dogecoin in 2013. A developer named Billy Markus harnessed the image in an effort to mock cryptocurrencies being traded at the time, transposing the dog’s image onto a gold coin as the emblem for dogecoin in 2013, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Much coin,” it reads in one spot.
An X post by Dogecoin Friday called Kabosu the community’s “inspiration,” adding that “the impact this one dog has made across the world is immeasurable.”
With News Wire Services