The Judges Health Monitoring Annual Breed Summary for 2016 rather surprisingly contained more newly reported issues by judges – hocks flexing forwards, unsound front and rear movement and yet again, dogs overweight and significantly overweight
From 16 reports which includes the health score that Judges have given for the entire entry, 10 judges said that there was absolutely no concern whatsoever (down from 13 in 2014 and up from 9 in 2015); 4 said there is a very slight concern, 1 said that there are two or three features that need watching and one judge reported that there is a strong concern about many of the issues affecting the breed. So between them, these 6 judges both saw and reported 15 dogs with an excessively long coat (up from 12 last year and 9 in 2014) 3 who were significantly overweight (down from 6 last year, which was up from 4 in 2014) and 3 with movement/construction concerns! I suppose one consolation is that there weren’t any reports about dogs with wet eyes this year.
I think the one thing these surveys do demonstrate, is that how subjective the whole concept of ‘show judging’ is. One judge’s opinion of good movement is often another’s example of ‘twice round the ring and they’ve knitted a jumper’.