About
Birthday Dog (aka “Stoner Dog”) is the nickname given to Riley, a bichon frise/poodle mix owned by Maureen Ravelo from San Jose, CA. The dog’s image went viral primarily through Reddit in late February and became the subject of a number of photoshopped images mostly through Buzzfeed in March 2010.
Spread
On February 23rd, 2010 Reddit user neoneo185 uploaded the picture with the title Epic Dog, where it received over 3000 up-votes and over 700 comments. Many comments pointed out something unique about not only the dog’s smile, but his eyes.
ajprax: Looks really baked.
Shaper_pmp: I suspect his paws are huuuuuuuuge.
Majupra: “Duuude. This cake is so… … …duuude.”
AnnArchist: he got high as fuck
skizmo: How high is that ?
texpundit: Exactly one fuck high.
The picture was posted on the Huffington Post blog the same day.
Soon after, multiple iterations of Birthday Dog were submitted to Buzzfeed.
One of the most influential posts on Buzzfeed came from Top 20 Buzzfeed user Jack Shepard, who posted a link to an exploitable version.
On March 4th, 2010, Heavy.com compiled their own “Top 10 Stoned Birthday Dog Photoshops.”
On March 25th, the original photo was reblogged onto Moronail.net and it it People magazine’s People Pets blog on March 31st.
By April 8th, The Today Show brought both Riley and his owner on to see the dog, squashing the rumor that the dog was high. Their visit to NYC was covered by their local NBC station.
Transcription from Today Show interview:
I posted it first on my Facebook, thinking it would give my friends a good laugh. And my friend, his name is John Lipari is the one who saw the picture on my Facebook – he said that he was actually in a night class when he saw it – and he laughed out loud in his lecture hall, and he posted it on Reddit.com, and that’s when it started to go viral.
Search Trend
There have been other searches for “birthday dog” in the past, typically reflected searches for birthday cards and birthday cakes for dogs. But beginning in February of 2010, searches for “birthday dog” spiked, rising sharply through March and April.