Good-est boy Tucker!

Recently, two pet parents of two golden retrievers grieved collectively over the death of a dog they did not know but loved deeply, and wondered what it meant for their fur-children in the long run. One out of three golden retrievers is diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, a form of cancer with a prognosis of a few more weeks. Very few make it past that time; some are a little luckier than others. 'What does it mean for a golden retriever parent? Why do they all get cancer? How do we prevent it? Is it because they were a crossbreed dog?' asked one sobbing dog-mom to another. The other did not know all the answers, only what the internet told her. And the internet did not tell her a lot.

On 30th August, Courtney Budzyn, mom to the internet favourite squishy boy Tucker grimly shared Tucker’s Lymphoma diagnosis. She was cautiously optimistic and informed her millions of followers that despite Tucker’s diagnosis, he was doing well and was considered to be in partial remission within just one week of treatment. He was also being treated by renowned board-certified veterinary oncologist and naturalist with a degree in Chinese Herbal medicine, Dr. Erin Bannink. A few days later Tucker’s official Instagram account posted a story of the happy pup running with his tail wagging with the caption 'Hekk Cancer'. In the diagnosis video, a distraught Courtney said that she had done everything she could to prevent cancer.

She also said that with goldens, it is never a matter of if but when they get cancer. Tucker was 8 and a half years old. She also said that Tucker was getting chemotherapy and chances of chemo tolerance was much better in dogs than Humans. And Tucker was still an active dog.

On 6th September, a bereaved Courtney uploaded the dreaded video to inform everyone of Tucker’s passing: how the chemotherapy had left a hole in his intestines, which created an infection 'that seemed to hit him overnight.' Even though he was immediately put on antibiotics and fluids, his temperature kept raising and they had to let him go. Clutching a box, that appeared to hold her beloved Chuch’s ashes she said that her original intent had been to only post a photo but she knew Tucker was not just hers but the millions of people who had seen him grow up from the puppy who loved ice cubes and chimken (dogs have not eaten chicken in a long time!) to having swimming and wrestling sessions with his son Todd and hekking Linda away for all her silliness.

But why Tucker? What did he do to make millions of people globally collectively grieve? He was, after all, ‘just a dog’ on the internet.

But was he?

Let’s go back to 2018. Courtney Budzyn was cleaning houses to make a living. She brought home an eight-week-old golden retriever puppy. At first it was just innocuous videos: Tucker coming when called and Tucker sitting pretty for treats. But then came the ice-cube video. She put an ice-cube in front of him to capture his reaction. And he did exactly what puppies do: pawed at it, retrieved it, pawed at it again- intrigued by the cold and offended enough to not leave it alone. Within six months of that video, Tucker’s account had around sixty thousand followers. Within the next two year, Courtney and her husband Mike had both quit their jobs, to make content creation, rather dog content creation, their full-time jobs. Tucker was their job, their business in the literal sense of the term and he was both family and business. Currently, Tucker’s Instagram account alone has. 4.5 million followers.

Truth is, Tucker was the Dog, who made a lot of people fall in love with the hashtags ‘dogstagram’, ‘dogs of Instagram.’ Yes, he had his antics: with his derpy folds, and the unmistakable mark on his tongue and those long sighs, but he was the goodest boy- millions of people felt in their beings when Courtney said, 'He was a part of me', because Tucker was a part of them too. Comments, memorial reels, and posts have flooded every corner of social media, and this is neither an accident nor a coincidence.

What separated Tucker from the plethora of other cute dog content was that Tucker talked. Not in the literal sense of course. The USP of his videos was that they put words in his mouth: by creating subtitles that became his interior monologue. His exasperation, negotiation or entitlement, frustration with ‘Linda’ a fictional name for Courtney that also pays homage to the once-viral Listen Linda meme. Popular Canadian goldens ‘Sterls’ Sterling and ‘Colly’ Collin also call their mom Doris, even when their mother is called Diane. This has helped create not just an alter-ego for these people, but also a subversion where a dog names their humans something that is not their real name. The captions obviously created a bridge between a dog being, well a dog and the obvious anthropomorphising through which he possessed an elaborate interior life. Anthropomorphising animals is older than writing itself- myths have done it, fables, fairy tales, folklore, Disney and Hergé- they have all done it. And the internet ‘doggo’ language with ‘mlem’, ‘doin me a’, ‘bamboozle’ did exist before Tucker. But Tucker, rather his mom Courtney, industrialised it. Social media is one volatile and over-saturated place. Millions of people trying to be content creators but very few people figure out the actual formula behind massive success: its not how frequently you post, how good is your chosen topic is, but rather on how likeable and relatable the audience finds them. Every content creator has their niche, except Tucker’s niche comprised a collective 22 million people across mediums. Tucker Budzyn was able to monetise the joke format into a serial narrative with recurring characters: Mike, Linda and Tucker’s own son Todd. Tucker had a wedding with his long-term girlfriend, Journee but could not mate with her due to their genetic incompatibilities. He later sired a litter of stinkingly cute pups with another golden retriever named Josephine, or Mommy Jo. Journee too, passed away of lymphoma in 2024.

Tucker’s life was no less dramatic than another famous family of the internet. His own son Todd, whom he found to be a nuisance, his food reaction ASMR video; him trying to colour his face after comments flooded in saying Tucker was getting old- all of it cumulatively created a world where people were effectively keeping up with the Budzyns. Every posthumous tribute that has flooded in has unanimously agreed that Tucker walked so the dog profiles that came after him could run. Tucker established the grammar of how the videos should be: every member of the household playing their part, captions functioning as dialogue, much like silent-era films, and the do(s) as the main character with thoughts and opinions. If sources are to be believed, then by 2023 Tucker was raking in millions from brand deals and placements. Add YouTube revenues of anywhere between $40,000-60,000, Instagram ads and story deals around $20,000-$40,000, and that amount alone does not look too shabby. Yes, Tucker was an industry unto himself; that is true, but his death has sparked greater debate around the alarming increase in cancer in golden retrievers.

Roughly 60% of all goldens die of cancer. This figure is derived from the Golden Retriever Club of America, and this data has been repeated so often that at this point, it reads akin to received wisdom rather than actual numbers. The Morris Animal Foundation’s Golden Retriever Lifetime Study is a much better marker. The study enrolled 3044 dogs and followed them for fourteen years. Now, more than 650,000 biological samples and 1.6 million laboratory results have recorded over 1700 cancer diagnoses in its cohort. At the study’s ten-year mark, we see that three-quarters of all deaths among all enrolled dogs were cancer-related. The four cancers that the study tracked were hemangiosarcoma, lymphoma, high-grade mast cell tumours and osteosarcoma, with the first being the primary cause. The reason could be because Golden retrievers are a relatively younger breed. Dudley Marjoribanks, the first Baron of Tweedmouth, at his Scottish estate at Guisachan in 1860 bred the first golden retriever by crossing a yellow retriever called Nous and a now extinct Tweed water Spaniel called Belle. He maintained his studbook with Victorian fastidiousness. Every golden retriever from Courtney’s Tucker to my Amy and Emma is a descendant of that project. It has to be remembered, that golden retrievers were bred to be field dogs, energetic and athletic and today’s showline dogs with their teddy-bear looks are vastly different than their ancestors. Even though golden retrievers are said to produce more oxytocin than other dogs and are far more attuned to human emotions, the vast breeding network, with sires and dams being used repeatedly, has also tightened the genetic bottleneck. The cancer-predisposing variants in the founder population were never really eradicated, rather they got much more concentrated with each new generation.

Genomics is using names. Tonomura et al. (2015) published a study in PLOS Genetics and discovered two locations on golden retriever dog chromosome 5, approximately 4 mb apart, and they combine to account for around 20% of the chances for developing hemangiosarcoma and B-cell lymphoma. The more interesting finding is that both blood vessel cancer and lymphocyte cancer are in the same genetic location. This finding indicates that both cancers may possibly have the same type of cell as an origin, not the traditional thinking in veterinary oncology. However, 20% does not mean most cases. The rest of the causes are unknown. The rest of the causes might not be purely genetic. The statistically higher rate of cancer deaths of 61% in goldens bred in the USA and 39% in goldens bred in Europe is large enough to be related to breeding practices or the environment or both. The environmental data from the study by Morris is not helpful. One study focused on lymphoma indicated that benzene, xylene and secondhand smoke increased the risk of lymphoma. Another study of environmental pollution as a whole indicated that exposure to cancer-causing agents was not significant. This is the nature of longitudinal studies. They produce contradictory results before revealing the answers, and the study is still ongoing.

Untreated Lymphoma diagnosed pups live for around a month, those who do go into remission, manage a few more years. But some just don’t make it, despite everything done right. Tucker didn’t. But that doesn’t mean he did not leave a legacy behind: he leaves behind his son Todd and his other children, Of All the Sniffs I Love the Most, is set for publication in November this year, and he leaves behind a legacy of other pet accounts from imbluethesiberian, to Brodie the Dood amongst others. Of course these are words, and words do not make up for the floof shaped hole he leaves behind in our hearts. People have spoken in length about how Tucker was the only thing that made them smile when they were going through the worst phases in their lives, how Tucker convinced their families to let them have dogs, how Tucker made them smile and forget their sorrows even for a while. It's funny what a small screen can do for you, even funnier what a fluffy golden retriever sitting halfway across the world in Michigan would do for you.

Goodest Boy, Tucker, run free!