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Kabosu (circa November 2005 to May 24, 2024) was a female Shiba Inu who lived in Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, with her owner [[Atsuko Sato]]. Her photograph is the doge meme, which makes her the most financially consequential animal of the internet era: her face is the logo of [[Dogecoin]], the visual ancestor of SHIB and the entire dog coin family, and the origin point of [[meme coin]] iconography.

## Life

Kabosu was rescued in 2008 when a puppy mill shut down and its dogs faced culling; Sato adopted her and named her after the kabosu citrus fruit because of her round face. She lived as a family pet and therapy visit dog, appearing on Sato's blog from 2008 onward.

## The doge meme

In February 2010 Sato posted a set of photos, one showing Kabosu side eyeing the camera with paws crossed on a sofa. The image spread through Reddit and Tumblr and by 2013 had become doge, the meme annotating the dog's inner monologue in multicolored Comic Sans. In December 2013 [[Billy Markus]] and [[Jackson Palmer]] adopted the image as the face of Dogecoin, and from there Kabosu's likeness propagated into thousands of tokens, including the entire Shiba Inu ecosystem launched by [[Ryoshi]]. The original photo was sold as an NFT for roughly 4 million dollars in June 2021, then a record for a meme NFT, and was later fractionalized into the DOG token by PleasrDAO.

## Later years and death

In late 2022 Sato disclosed that Kabosu had chronic lymphoma and leukemia, and the dog's health updates were followed globally, with [[Dogecoin]] communities funding charity drives in her honor and a statue of her unveiled in a Sakura park in 2023. Kabosu died at home on the morning of May 24, 2024, at approximately 18, as Sato petted her. Coverage ran worldwide, from NPR to Deadline, and a farewell ceremony on May 26 drew more than 50 fans along with international media. Tributes came from across crypto, where her death was treated as the passing of the culture's founding figure.

## Neiro and the coin wave that followed

After Kabosu's death, Sato adopted a new rescue Shiba Inu, [[Neiro]], roughly 10 years old, and the adoption set off its own memecoin wave. [[Binance]] listed First Neiro on Ethereum for spot trading on September 16, 2024, and the token jumped about 700 percent that day, its market cap moving from 15 million to 146 million dollars. The NEIRO family of tokens hit an all time high above 1 billion dollars in market cap on November 12, 2024, before fading; by April 2026 the leading token was down about 97 percent from that peak. The pattern repeated in July 2026 with a cat rather than a dog: pump.fun traders launched [[Catecoin]] within hours of a Sato Instagram cat post, a coin Sato publicly denied any connection to on July 28, 2026.

## Legacy

Kabosu outlived the joke, the bubble, and several of the coins that used her face. Her image remains the standard against which all [[meme coin]] mascots are measured, and her successors in the culture, including [[Balltze]], are understood as descendants of the doge lineage. In [[the trenches]] her photo is shorthand for the entire premise of the asset class: a dog looked sideways at a camera, and a few hundred billion dollars of market history followed.

## Remembrance and afterlife

A documentary about Kabosu and Sato, titled underDOGE, was announced in May 2024 from Scout Productions, the company behind Queer Eye. Own The Doge, the community that stewards the fractionalized Doge NFT and its DOG token, announced on April 17, 2024 that it had acquired exclusive licensing rights to the Doge image from Sato, and it operates an online Doge Memorial for Kabosu. Sakura, Chiba added a Kabosu manhole cover in 2024, alongside the statue unveiled there in 2023.

Sato hosted a first anniversary memorial on May 24, 2025 at Sakura Gnome, a dog friendly park near Sakura Furusato Square, opening the event to fans remembering pets of their own who had died that year. In late February 2026 a four month old Shiba Inu puppy named Yuzu joined Sato's household alongside Neiro and another dog, Cocoro, per a press release, effectively self reported.

Sato's charity record predates the coins: she raised more than 500 million yen for children's rights groups through 2021 Kabosu photo NFT auctions, and Sato together with the Doge community have donated over 1 million dollars to charities including Save the Children.

Kabosu's image outlived even government branding disputes: the United States Department of Government Efficiency, established by executive order on January 20, 2025 and known by the acronym DOGE, used Kabosu derived Doge branding, and its website briefly displayed a Dogecoin style Doge logo before it was removed.

## References

- Wikipedia, Kabosu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabosu_(dog)
- today.com: https://www.today.com/pets/kabosu-doge-meme-dog-dies-rcna153894
- NPR: https://www.npr.org/2024/05/24/nx-s1-4978803/dogecoin-shiba-inu-meme-dies
- deadline.com: https://deadline.com/2024/05/kabosu-doge-dead-1235938063/
- tokyoweekender.com: https://www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/news-and-opinion/internet-sensation-doge-dog-kabosu-passes-away/
- cnbc.com: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/11/iconic-doge-meme-nft-breaks-record-selling-for-roughly-4-million.html
- CCN: https://www.ccn.com/education/crypto/what-is-neiro-how-to-get-and-use/
- CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/09/16/first-neiro-on-ethereum-related-to-dogecoin-rockets-700-on-binance-spot-listing
- cryptonewsnavigator.com: https://www.cryptonewsnavigator.com/academy/article/neiro-crypto-survived-the-meme-coin-graveyard-by-doing-this
- deadline.com: https://deadline.com/2024/05/dogecoin-dog-kabosu-documentary-1235944176/
- Cointelegraph: https://cointelegraph.com/news/doge-image-kabosu-rights-dao-meme
- memorial.ownthedoge.com: https://memorial.ownthedoge.com/
- kanalcoin.com: https://www.kanalcoin.com/kabosu-memorial-event-crypto-impact/
- streetinsider.com: https://www.streetinsider.com/Press+Releases/Atsuko+Sato+Welcomes+New+Shiba+Inu+Puppy+to+Her+Home+in+Japan/26235205.html
- Know Your Meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/department-of-government-efficiency-doge
- creativebloq.com: https://www.creativebloq.com/design/logos-icons/elons-official-doge-logo-is-stale-meme-branding-at-its-worst

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