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
Brother's Little Helper at the time, I didn't think I needed to be taught a lesson while I watched The Simpsons. I still don't." He did, however, "love" the "tag back" to the volunteer fire department seen in the beginning of the episode, and "the fact that they can't find how to fight a satellite fire in their handbook". In his review of "The Simpsons - The Complete Eleventh Season", Brian Tallerico of The Deadbolt considered "Brother's Little Helper" to be one of the season's best episodes. Colin Jacobsson of DVD Movie Guide was favorable as well, calling the episode "pretty good" and