Kabosu, the female Shiba dog protagonist of thousands of “doge” memes, died today in Japan. Its owners communicated this through their Kabochan blog. She was 18 years old, and after being abandoned by the breeding farm where she was born, in 2008 she was adopted by Atsuko Sato, a teacher. Kabosu has become an internet sensation since 2010, when a photo of her posing with her paws folded and a quizzical expression made the rounds online.
This funny image, as CNN reports, has sparked a proliferation of “doge” memes, based on an intentional misspelling of the word “dog”. The popularity of “doge” memes solidified in 2013, when Kabosu became the face of the alternative cryptocurrency Dogecoin, a tongue-in-cheek answer to Bitcoin. A Dogecoin Friday