Elbow Dysplasia

Elbow dysplasia (ED) is emerging as a serious problem in English Setters. Currently 16.4% of setters submitted to the OFA have ED. Like hip dysplasia it is a multifaceted polygenic disease with a complicated inheritance, and is even more likely to cause crippling arthritis and pain. A dog with ED can also sometimes show no visible symptoms until old age, so screening is critical. Reducing the incidence of this disease requires selection of breeding dogs using the same principles that are effective with hip dysplasia.

Elbow dysplasia itself cannot be seen on an x-ray, and is diagnosed solely by the presence of arthritis it causes. Because the arthritis doesn't always develop at an early age, "normal" results from early preliminary elbow evaluations are not as reliable as they are for hips. We don't do preliminary elbow evaluations on our own dogs for this reason.

We are aware of two dogs out of our litters diagnosed with elbow dysplasia. Our breeding dogs are OFA certified elbows normal.