Tucker Budzyn, the Golden Retriever the Internet Watched Grow Up, Has Died at 8
Tucker Budzyn, the golden retriever people watched grow up on their phones for eight years, has died at 8.
His owner, Courtney Budzyn, adopted him with her husband Mike in June 2018, when he was eight weeks old. The family lived in Michigan and started filming him almost right away. His owners typed captions in text bubbles over his face, giving him lines like he was actually talking back. He built almost 12 million followers on TikTok alone, plus large followings on Instagram and YouTube.
Just days before he died, Courtney told followers that Tucker had been diagnosed with lymphoma. The cancer had reached his intestines.
Courtney said Tucker responded well to treatment at first. He reached partial remission, and kept swimming, playing, and going through his days like nothing had changed. Then a hole developed in the area of his intestine affected by the cancer, and it caused an infection that hit overnight.
His temperature spiked, and the family rushed him to the vet, where he got antibiotics and fluids. His condition kept getting worse. He died on Wednesday, September 2.
Courtney posted a video three days later, on Saturday, September 5, explaining what happened. She said she couldn’t stay quiet while messages wishing Tucker a fast recovery kept arriving. She described trying everything to save him and watching his temperature climb with nothing to bring it down. “We had to let him go,” she said.
Grief over a dog does not usually ask whether you ever held the leash. Tucker was never anyone’s actual dog outside his own house, but people had watched him swim, play, and make faces at the camera for years. That kind of repetition builds something real, even through a screen. Losing him means losing a piece of a routine a lot of people did not realize they had.
Owners who have watched their own dog decline recognize the feeling: doing everything you can and still ending up powerless. Tucker’s followers are getting a secondhand version of that. It is a real loss, even if it is an unusual one.
Tucker’s fans watched him grow up online, from an 8 week old puppy to a dog with a following most people never reach. Fans have been posting tributes on his accounts since the announcement. A picture book about his life with Courtney, titled Of All the Sniffs I Love the Most, is due out in November.
