Why don’t animal lovers do something about these dog sled races? Have you ever witnessed a race on television? Talk about torture. It’s sickening to watch the dogs, panting and their tongues hanging out, pull a heavily laden sled with a driver through snow and ice in bitter cold.

The following selections were taken from the letters-to-the-editor section of a newspaper. Each can be interpreted as expressing one or more arguments. Begin by identifying the conclusion of each. Then disengage the covert assumptions, value claims, and other cognitive assertions from the emotive language and translate them into emotively neutral premises. Use the two examples in the text as models. Finally, evaluate the restructured arguments. Some may turn out to be good ones.