The root of all of Alfie's problems lies somewhere in here
but where? That is the difficult thing about genetics, it is extremely difficult to pinpoint the reasons why the genes fall the way they do. Mostly breeders will be second guessing.
When you look at his pedigree all looks OK. But you need to look further back.
For instance a dog called Macdevil vd Bemmeraue appears in his pedigree 4 times. The original imported dogs into the UK known as Rakker, Heliose and Matilde Van't Staringsland each appear six times. At least a dozen other ancestors appear twice. This means that Alfie was a highly inbred dog and is likely to have had a high coeifficient of inbreeding (COI). As do many if not most of the imported HPR breeds here in the UK. I believe that it is this degree of inbreeding that is the root of the health issues in these breeds.
If breeders were willing to accept that line breeding is ill advised and were adopting healthier breeding practices we could forgive them the past. Because they didn't know any better. But they do now know and sadly many persist with this practice. As can be seen currently with the UK's approach to breeding Slovakian Rough Haired Pointers.