The Apple Dog meme, also called the Dog With Apple Meme, is a photograph of a small dachshund dog in a blue sweater holding a red apple in its mouth while standing in an apple-strewn field. The original poster purposely misspelled the caption on the photo, writing, “This dock is holding an April🍎 in its Melt.”
The post from Nov. 15, 2023, went viral on X over the purposely nonsensical exploitable catchphrase combined with the dog’s guilty and innocent facial expression. It has seen a resurgence in 2024 with AI edits on TikTok.
Meme basics
- Meme/trend creator: @brokenbyrds on X
- Meme type: Exploitable meme, catchphrase, AI meme, brain rot
- First appearance: Nov. 15, 2023
- Origin source: Post on X / Image on Imgur
- Used to convey: Nothing specific, a lighthearted meme highlighting how silly the dog looks while holding its apple.
- Peak popularity: Dec. 8-14, 2024
Origin and spread
The Apple Dog meme, also known as the Dog With Apple or Dog With Apple In Mouth meme, was first posted by @brokenbyrds on X, whose Nov. 15, 2023, post went viral with over 6.5K retweets and 28K likes in the past year.
In the original post, @brokenbyrds shared an image of a dachshund in a cozy sweater holding an apple in its mouth, and staring off-camera. It is surrounded by more apples on the ground and the image is overexposed. The image is captioned, “This dock is holding an April🍎 in its Melt.” The post utilizes a common way of animals “talking” in posts, called “LOLspeak,” which includes misspellings and incorrect capitalizations in a humorous way.
The original image was posted by an unknown user on Imgur on April 22, 2013, with the caption, “Look! I got you an apple!” The post has been viewed over 8.2K times and racked up over 2.7K upvotes in 11 years.
The current iteration of the Apple Dog meme is most likely inspired by a post by @Twizzwald on X on Nov. 22, 2022, in which they wrote, “This dock is holding a Greg 🥚 on its Held” along with a photo of a white dog looking confused and nervous as it balances an egg on its head. That post has been retweeted over 5K times and liked 12K times since it was posted.
Popularity
The Apple Dog “This Dock Is Holding an April🍎 in Its Melt” exploitable meme format took off on social media, with folks replacing the dog in the photo with other creatures and pop culture references, such as Kirby or One Piece characters.
It went truly viral as a meme format once it reached TikTok, where @funnytextohh posted a video captioned, “Funny texts with music” with the Apple Dog at the beginning of the video, in which the text message-formatted posts are sung in the style of country music. The TikTok has been viewed 1.2 million times and liked over 142.8K times since it was first posted on April 27, 2024.
Other TikTokers have been inspired by the song and posted their own iterations utilizing the sound. For example, @underratedgrapejuice made a Sonic the Hedgehog animation to it and TikToker @r0b0rain drew a Lego Monkie Kid animatic to the sound.
The Apple Dog meme is so popular that it has been turned into a purchasable meme cryptocurrency.
What’s up with the Apple Dog AI videos?
The Apple Dog meme grew in popularity on TikTok after user @artsdd6 posted a video on Nov. 30, 2024, to the social media app utilizing the AI generator Minimax by Hailuo AI. In the video, all of the apples in the photograph have been replaced by Wapple, which have eyes and mouths. Suddenly a figure runs behind the dog, bare-legged, startling the dog. An apple floats into its mouth and it starts running down the path into a forest.
This AI-generated video has been viewed over 3.3 million times and has 424.5K likes. The TikToker has posted other versions of the video and has done several of the original posts on X of the dog with an egg on its head.
@artsdd6 #minimax #ai #minimaxai #ai #dog #собака #fyp #🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦 #🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 ♬ оригинальный звук – Матвей
Many more TikTokers have taken to this AI meme trend, posting their takes of the viral video.
Meme examples
@funnytextohh Funny texts with music part 26 #funnytexts #textingstory #texts ♬ original sound – FunnytextOhh
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- The Silly Dog In A Propeller Hat meme is for when you feel like a kid again
- Stop Fighting Dog meme: the origins and popularity of the T-Pose Puppy
- Explaining the Esnupi meme
- ‘I Know What You Are’: A Whitney Chewston meme
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