Santa's Little Helper the dog was a "sympathetic" character. Welker has been praised by staff members for his performances on the show. David Mirkin has noted that "he can do anything, and it fits perfectly. You forget you're listening to a guy, and he's a pleasure to work with." Groening has commented that he was "unbelievably good" at doing animal noises. After 1995, Castellaneta voiced Santa's Little Helper on his own while Welker performed other animal noises until his full departure in 2002, when he was denied a pay raise. In the "questions and answers" section on his website, Welker revealed that the
Helper application Helper application A helper application is an external viewer program launched to display content retrieved using a web browser. Some examples include JPEGview, Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player, Real Player and Adobe Reader. Unlike a plugin whose full code is included into the browser's address space, a helper application is a standard application, typically an image viewer or similar type lacking full save functionality. The use of helper applications was more common in the early days of the World Wide Web, when HTML and file formats were still becoming standardized and computers were less powerful. Users of a slower computer