The emblem for the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, pictured right here in a 2021 screenshot, is considered one of numerous locations the place a picture of the canine Kabosu seems. Her proprietor says the Shiba Inu is sick with most cancers.

Richard Drew/AP

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Richard Drew/AP

The emblem for the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, pictured right here in a 2021 screenshot, is considered one of numerous locations the place a picture of the canine Kabosu seems. Her proprietor says the Shiba Inu is sick with most cancers.

Richard Drew/AP

A Shiba Inu who earned world fame for starring in a viral meme is sick with leukemia and liver illness, her proprietor says.

In a collection of Instagram posts this week, Atsuko Sato, a instructor who lives in Japan, mentioned the 17-year-old pooch was in “a very dangerous condition” after being recognized with acute cholangiohepatitis, a kind of irritation within the digestive system, and power lymphoma leukemia, a blood most cancers.

“Right now, the liver level is very bad and jaundice appears,” Sato wrote in one caption. “But antibiotics will definitely improve.”

The canine, identified by the identify “Kabosu,” had stopped consuming and ingesting over the weekend however was starting to get her vitality again, Sato mentioned.

Kabosu, a rescue canine, turned an web sensation after social media customers started resharing a photograph posted to Sato’s private weblog in 2010.

Kabosu’s smirking face, facet eyes and crossed paws have been successful on-line, usually overlaid with comedian sans textual content depicting what is perhaps her interior dialogue. Users started referring to the picture as “doge” and a worldwide meme was born.

According to web lore, the time period “doge” first appeared in a 2005 episode of “Homestar Runner,” an animated web-based comedy collection.

But the misspelled moniker took on one other that means in 2013 with the emergence of a titularly-branded cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.

The foreign money — which was purported to be a joke — spiked in value years later when Elon Musk, the richest man on earth on the time, tweeted “Dogecoin is the people’s currency” and “no highs, no lows, only Doge.”

Kabosu’s legacy has solely continued to develop, transcending web tradition to seem on pastries, ads for the Stockholm subway and the jerseys of professional athletes.

In 2021, the enduring picture of Kabosu offered as an NFT for a record $4 million.

On Instagram, Kabosu’s proprietor thanked the canine’s followers for the outpouring of help, saying the pair have been “getting power from all over the world.”