Santa's Little Helper their old pet. Bart eventually gives Santa's Little Helper away instead of Laddie when repo men take back everything he fraudulently purchased. Feeling guilty about this disloyalty and bored with his too perfect new dog, Bart tries to get him back. When he finally finds him, Santa's Little Helper is serving as a seeing-eye dog for a blind man, but eventually decides to return to the family. In "Stop or My Dog Will Shoot" (season 18, 2007), Santa's Little Helper becomes a local hero after finding a lost Homer, and the Simpsons decide to enroll him in the Animal Police
Brother's Little Helper of IGN posted a "flashback review" of "Brother's Little Helper". Canning, calling the episode "funny" and "a standout episode in this later season", was particularly fond of the episode's opening. However, he was less impressed with the third act of the episode, calling it "lackluster". He felt that the part involving Mark McGwire was "a silly cop out" and that it wasn't as funny as what was leading up to it. He also stated that he was put off by the writers wanting to come across a message. "It's not that I necessarily disagreed with this sentiment", Canning wrote, "but