I looked at the guide you mentioned. The template seems to be the "head.tpl". Since I am using the Neon Household Template I have to change the "head.tpl" in the templates/custom folder. I tried changing it but it didn't work.
What I wanted is a small animated flag on a circle with a black background just before the company logo. Since the animated gif is simply a flag with a transparent background I tried placing the circle with the black background as a background image in the table cell and then inserting the animated gif into the cell. I experimented with this in Dreamweaver and it worked fine. For some reason when I try it in the head.tpl nothing is displayed at all.
The original tpl code was:
<tr>
<td width="100%" style="padding-left: 42px;">
<a href="{$http_location}"><img src="{$ImagesDir}/custom/Company_name.gif" width="305" height="79" border="0" alt="{$config.Company.company_name}" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
The change that I made was to simply add the following, right after the <tr> in the above code :
<td width=92 background="{$ImagesDir}/custom/flag_bg.gif"><img src={"$ImagesDir}/custom/Flag1.gif" width="68 height="50">
I'm not much of a template coder but that was my attempt.