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Pup behind viral 'doge' meme diagnosed with leukemia and liver disease, owner says

The shiba inu that went from meme fame in the 2010s to the face of Dogecoin cryptocurrency spent Christmas Day in the hospital.
"Doge" is the nickname given to Kabosu, a Japanese Shiba Inu, who rose to online fame in 2013.
Kabosu first gained fame when her photo was paired with fractured phrases, like "so amaze" and "much excitement," in the 2010s "doge" meme.

The furry face behind one of the internet's most enduring memes isn't doing well.

The owner of Kabosu, the shiba inu famous for the "doge" meme that swept the internet in the 2010s, shared the sad news with fans during the holidays.

On Christmas Day, Japanese kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato took to Instagram to announce that Kabosu was headed to the hospital after being unable to eat or drink on her own the night before. Two days later, Sato shared the results of that visit.

"Kabosu’s disease names are acute cholangiohepatitis and chronic lymphoma leukemia," Sato wrote of the dog's condition. "Right now, the liver level is very bad and jaundice appears. But antibiotics will definitely improve."

She added that some improvement has already been seen, as Kabosu once again has an appetite and can drink water.

"To all of you who are worried, thank you very much😊" she wrote.

The news of Kabosu's condition comes nearly two months after the "doge" star turned 17.

Kabosu has already lived a much fuller life than she might have had if Sado hadn't adopted her in 2008.

“She was a pedigreed dog from a puppy mill, and when the puppy mill closed down, she was abandoned along with 19 other shiba dogs,” Sato once told The Verge. “Some of them were adopted, but the rest of them were killed.”

The meme linked to Kabosu first took off after one photo Sato shared to her blog in 2010, in which the dog appeared to give the camera a playful side-eye, gained popularity on Tumblr and Reddit. The pic eventually became the unofficial image of the subreddit r/Doge, where it was often paired with incomplete phrases, such as "so amaze" and "much excitement."

In 2013, software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer used the same image of Kabosu as the logo for the cryptocurrency they created, Dogecoin.

The original Doge meme sold as an NFT for $4 million in 2021.