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
Bart's Dog Gets an "F" shorts, the characters spun off into their own half-hour prime-time show on the Fox network named "The Simpsons". Matt Groening, the series' creator, wanted Ullman to make a guest appearance in one of the shorts, but was told that she was too busy with the rest of "The Tracey Ullman Show". When her show was canceled in 1990, Ullman agreed to do a guest appearance on "The Simpsons" after being asked by Groening once again. The animal noises for the episode, including those by Santa's Little Helper, were performed by Frank Welker. It was the first "The Simpsons" episode Welker