First and foremost, I'm a big health nut when it comes to my dogs and our breed. However, certain issues also need to always be understood. After all, nature plays dirty tricks on all of us, including us humans!
One has to understand that not all breeders, even this day and age, test for elbows or for that matter, each of the "Big four." You can go on to say that patellas also need to be checked, as some breeders do, but most don't.
In Germany and other countries you could cry about them not testing for hearts, eyes, and thyroid. And it seems only recently they too caught onto elbows... but still breed to dogs with EL++. It is, after-all, a work in progress for us all.
As one pointed out, not many pedigrees/lines have all health clearances as of yet, let alone passing elbows. Breeding isn't exact science and if only a handful of dogs that cleared everything were used, the gene pool would actually have other problems. Who's to say that these few dogs would be a perfect match for each other? What if one had a horrible temperament problem? What if it had another type of health problem that isn't tested for? You wouldn't breed that dog even if it cleared all tests. Just because a dog has a title and all clearances doesn't make them breedable or available to breed to. Honestly, it doesn't always work like clock work when you breed a litter.... you could place two parents both CHIC rated and have 3 out of 5 become longhaired and the other two not clear hips. You have to know the bloodlines, what they produce, and what are all the details that make up the dog/pairing.
I could sit here all day and criticize breeders about why they don't do so and so, but when it boils down to actually doing the deed, it really isn't that easy to be in their shoes. Genetics are not always black and white. Every breed has problems and I have seen great improvement over the short years I've been in our breed. Most of the breeders are very passionate about what they do, trying to make a difference, trying to create that perfect dog, but they just don't exist and never will! We can only try to do our best and go from there......
Believe it or not, it will still take some time for our breed to weed out more elbow problems, just as it did with hips. One way of helping might be to have more positions of the elbow x-rayed because one picture just doesn't seem to cut it with elbows. I don't know the exact time when everyone decided to all of sudden x-ray elbows, but even 10 years ago when I purchased one of my dogs, it wasn't commonplace for breeders yet. And it still wasn't when I had him x-rayed for his hips. We can only hope that it catches on with more people. I do love seeing CHIC#'s in our breed!
