The dog ate my homework Helper, the family dog, eating his homework. "I didn't know dogs actually did that", he says, and finds his teacher equally incredulous since he had used that excuse before. In a later episode, when the dog goes to work for the police, Bart must eat his own homework for the excuse to work. When Mrs. Krabappel begins dating Ned Flanders, the Simpsons' neighbor, at the end of the 2011 season, she sees Santa's Little Helper in the Simpsons' yard and asks if he is the dog who has eaten Bart's homework so many times. Bart's attempts to demonstrate this and
Santa's Little Helper emotional range. And both will growl and possibly snap if you try to take their food." Although animals in cartoons often behave with "semi-human awareness", Groening said on the DVD audio commentary for the episode "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" that he prefers animals in cartoons to behave exactly the way they do in real life. As a result, Santa's Little Helper is depicted in this way on the show. There have, however, been some exceptions for gags, but most of the time the staff of "The Simpsons" tries to keep animals acting realistically. Several journalists have commented on the