Santa's Little Helper and is the center of the plots of several episodes. During the course of the show, he has fathered litters of puppies, passed obedience school, had surgery for bloat, replaced Duffman as the mascot for Duff Beer, and been trained as a police dog at Springfield's Animal Police Academy. Some of the episodes that focus on Santa's Little Helper have been inspired by popular culture or real experiences that staff members of the show have gone through. Although cartoon animals are often anthropomorphized, Santa's Little Helper generally exhibits canine behavior. Cast member Dan Castellaneta currently provides the dog's sounds on
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