When Santa's Little Helper rescues a lost Homer, he becomes a local hero and the Simpsons decide to enroll him in Police Dog Academy, where he is teamed with Lou and they become a crime-busting duo.

Physicist Stephen Hawking makes his third guest appearance on the show as himself, while Maurice LaMarche does the voice of the Horn Stuffer.

Homer, excited about going to Oktoberfest, is disappointed when he discovers that Marge has tricked him and the kids into going to a Harvest Festival which allows no alcohol.

Lisa crafts an escape plan with Tremaux's algorithm, a real life maze-solving method, but Homer is left behind after wrongly assuming that Marge wants to break up when she was suggesting to split up to find a way out.

Homer is lost inside the maze for several hours and Santa's Little Helper is called upon by Bart to find him.

This makes Santa's Little Helper jaded, and when he returns home, he bites Bart on the leg out of frustration.

Bart, being the only person still stranded in school trying to find Strangles, collapses from the smoke, (remarking "It smells like some chemicals cut one").

[5] However, Giuliani's appearance is present in the syndicated version of the episode where he gives the commencement address at the police animal academy graduation ceremony.

[7] Adam Finley of TV Squad states the episode "fell flat halfway through the middle act, and all of the third".