I'm not sure that the episode with the dead dog opening quote _is_ the episode with the dead dog (a spoiler), maybe was a previous one and because it was somewhat controversial this is a joke about it.
Can anyone confirm?
The two possible jokes works but are different, for me a pun of a previous episode is so much funny.
It seems that it's from "Stench and Stenchibility", from the last season of the show... so, much later than "Jurassic Bark".
Thanks! It's a great meta-joke then.
I mean to say - I won't watch the episode with the dead dog. So they fact they recognize that and added as meta info later was interesting.