Santa's Little Helper of their sacrifices and starts treating him badly, causing him to run away. He ends up in the possession of Mr. Burns, who trains him to become a vicious attack dog. Several days later, Bart stumbles upon the trained Santa's Little Helper and is attacked, but the greyhound eventually recognizes his old friend and stops. In "The Canine Mutiny" (season eight, 1997), Bart uses a fake charge card to buy a well-trained rough collie named Laddie from a mail-order catalog. Laddie learns many tricks that Santa's Little Helper is completely unable to perform, and the Simpson family nearly forgets about
Media in The Simpsons Homer's success and comfort in spite of his inherent laziness and ignorance. "Homer's Enemy" explores the comic possibilities of a realistic character with a strong work ethic placed alongside Homer in a work environment. In an essay for the book "Leaving Springfield", Robert Sloane describes the episode as "an incisive consideration of "The Simpsons"'s world. Although "The Simpsons" is known for its self-reflectivity, the show had never looked at (or critiqued) itself as directly as it does in ["Homer's Enemy"]." In the episode, Homer is portrayed as an everyman and the embodiment of the American spirit; however, in some scenes