Santa's Little Helper reason he stopped performing as Santa's Little Helper was because "The producers thought... 'Hmmm, Dan barks pretty good, and we are already paying him and he seems to like doing the dog thing... why do we need to pay Welker who comes in here, spends less than an hour, eats all the doughnuts, refuses to come to rehearsals... let's just give the damn dog to Dan!'" Santa's Little Helper has become a well-known dog because of his appearances in the series. A writer for "The Grand Rapids Press" wrote in 2002 that "we all know who Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa
Santa Claus and the Magic Drum go and show it to the master elf. At the same time odd things are happening around Santa's village, and strange accidents follow Santa. The peculiar events are traced back to a shaman with a powerful magic drum. At the end of the movie the shaman explains that he sent the mysterious letter as a child, and the drawing is him dressed as an elf because he wanted to be Santa's little Christmas helper. By accident the letter was not delivered to Santa, and as years passed and Santa did not reply, Vekara became begrudged. After both sides of the