Meet Tucker Budzyn — the Golden Retriever ‘influencer’ raking in $1 million a year

Every dog has his day — to make some serious cash.

In the dog-eat-dog world of social media influencing, 5-year-old golden retriever Tucker Budzyn is No. 1, according to research by portrait company Printed Pet Memories.

He’s a million-dollar mutt, hitting seven figures a year in earnings from sponsored ads since he was 2.

“A YouTube-paid post can be anywhere from $40,000 to $60,000 for a 30-minute pre-roll,” said Tucker’s owner Courtney Budzyn. “Instagram, we make about $20,000 for anywhere from three to eight stories.”

Budzyn, 31, who used to clean houses, and her husband, Mike, a civil engineer, quit their jobs to manage Tucker and his puppy son Todd full time.

She made Tucker an first video went viral.

“We gave him an ice cube and he was just pawing at it,” said Budzyn, of Michigan.

“I was floored that that many people were as interested in my dog as me. By the time he was 6 months old, he had 60,000 followers … It was insane.”

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Tucker now has close to 25 million followers across social media — 11.1 millionon Instagram and 62,400 on Twitter.

The Budzyns have partnered with companies like BarkBox, a monthly subscription service, and King Kanine CBD for dogs, with which they are making their own collection of products.

Second on the list of canine cash cows is @whataboutbunny, a sheepadoodle who has 8.3 million followers on TikTok and whose earnings, according to the study, are between $4,997 to $8,328 per post.

@DougthePug, who has 6 million TikTok followers, is third with a range of earnings from $3,599 to $5,999 per ad.

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Business is also booming for Boomer, a Samoyed, who is 11th on the list.

His owner, Charishma Cohen, 34, got the pooch at 11 weeks old from a Connecticut breeder when she lived in Brooklyn. The day she picked him up, in July 2018, she started an Instagram handle @boomer_the_landcloud to share videos with loved ones.

By August, he went viral.

“The very first one was when I was carrying him as a puppy, kind of like a baby and walking down the streets of Brooklyn,” Cohen, who now lives in Los Angeles, explained.

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Companies like PetSmart and Blue Buffalo pet food began asking Boomer, who now has 3.3 million TikTok followers, to create ads for their products. He now makes six figures a year collaborating with the likes of Expedia, MGM Resorts, Disney and Amazon, Cohen said.

American Bullies Noah and Lincoln, who are 10th on the list, made close to $55,000 in 2021 and $40,000 in 2022, and have worked with brands like Walmart, PetSmart, Swiffer, LG and Warner Brothers, for its movie “Paws of Fury.”

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“We didn’t really branch out too much last year because our hours are crazy,” said their owner Vivian Harris, 42, who works for the federal Labor Department.

She said this is only a “side hustle” for her and her husband, Palace, a personnel officer for the Department of Defense.

The Jacksonville, Fla., resident launched an Instagram page for the pair in 2014 and in 2019, TikTok, which had debuted the year prior, contacted them.

“That’s when they were introducing the pet niche onto TikTok,” she said. “Kind of like a special invite to test out the algorithm and the audiences.”

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Now their TikTok handle, @noah_and_lincoln has 3.6 million followers.

Ironically, the Harris family got Noah in 2011 after they found out the breeder was going to discard him because he was the runt of the litter.

“This breeder was in it for the money,” she said. “And he was going to basically just shoot him to get rid of him because he wasn’t going to be profitable.”