Being a child of the 80s, the above phrase was often heard – whether it be during the ad-break of a favourite show or when watching a film on TV. Something today’s generation will never understand!
I remember every Christmas we spent ages going through the festive TV Guide and circling all the films we wanted to watch and record, as living on a budget meant it was much cheaper to record films than buy them. Dad would stock up on the blank VHS tapes and be prepped and ready to record away when the films started and jump up in the breaks to pause and then re-record.
Over the years we had quite the collection of recorded films, all with either Tippex or rub off letters creating the film titles on the tape, which we’d watch them over and over again, especially our favourites.
As DVDs were introduced, and now the digital world of Netflix and Prime – I began to replace our collection, especially the classics, for my children to watch. And boy, what a surprise I had when sitting down to watch a favourite like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and discover there was a whole 5 minutes at the beginning of the film I had never seen before!!!! And not just this film but Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins and Half a Sixpence to name a few!
I can only assume that either Dad forgot to press record in time, or worked out that the film wouldn’t quite fit on the 2hour VHS and thought it would be better to miss the beginning and record the ending rather than the other way round. No-one wants to never find out if there was a happy ending or not.
For years I was more than happy being ignorant as to why a broken down old Chitty sat in the scrap yard needing a new home and enjoyed the story and obviously the songs (I’m a huge musicals fan!), but when I did see the beginning it added a whole new level or clarity and understanding – knowing the history of Chitty’s racing glory made the car and the story even more special.
Missing those first 5 minutes didn’t affect my enjoyment of the film at all, but learning the WHY to the story made everything fall into place and helped me to understand and appreciate the film even more.
For me, building the foundations of training skills and understanding WHY something happens is SO important, as it helps owners to be able to take things back to basics and appreciate that clarity as to WHY things happen, WHAT the reason is and GAIN knowledge to help them be a better care giver.
In training, we could skip the foundations, still enjoy teaching our dog new things, and even see great results. But spending a little bit of time understanding WHY something happens improves our knowledge, which enables owners to reflect on all situations and apply that knowledge in their future learning outside of the classroom to enhance their dog training journey.