A recent study reported that pet owners have longer, healthier lives on average than do people who own no pets. Specifically, dog owners tend to have a lower incidence of heart disease. In light of these findings, Sherwood Hospital should form a partnersh

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A recent study reported that pet owners have longer, healthier lives on average than do people who own no pets. Specifically, dog owners tend to have a lower incidence of heart disease. In light of these findings, Sherwood Hospital should form a partnership with Sherwood Animal Shelter to institute an adopt-a-dog program. The program would encourage dog ownership for patients recovering from heart disease, which should reduce these patients' chance of experiencing continuing heart problems and also reduce their need for ongoing treatment. As a further benefit, the publicity about the program would encourage more people to adopt pets from the shelter. And that will reduce the incidence of heart disease in the general population.

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

The author of the argument asserts that ownership of pets, in particular dogs, may help patients who recover after incidence of heart disease not to experience recur of the ailment and also reduce their necessity for ongoing treatment. Moreover, the implementation of the policy will lead to reduce the incidence of heart problems in general population. This statement is buttressed by evidence which is connected with the conclusion by several assumptions which should be carefully scrutinized in order to give a comprehensive estimation of soundness of the argument.

The first evidence which is given to us is that a recent study has discovered that pets' owners have healthier lives than do people who do not have pets. However, is it possible that other factors, which were neglected, lead to this result? For instance, it is said that owners of dogs tend to have lower chances of heart disease, perhaps these people have to walk these animals regularly and thus they have regular physical exercise which help them with their health conditions.

Furthermore, the arguer proposes to establish an adopt-a-dog program for people who have heart disease. This program supposedly should help the patients to reduce chances of repetition of the incidence of the disease. However, even if the dog's ownership is able to prevent this kind disease, perhaps it is unreasonable to assert that having a dog may alleviate or cure disease from which a person has been suffered. In fact, such characteristic of dog ownership as necessity to play with animal and walk it periodically which may help to prevent heart troubles may be extremely harmful for people who have had problems with heart. Thus the belief that ownership of a dog will inescapably help to avoid relapse of the illness or reduce need for treatment is dubious.

Finally, the arguer claims that the program will promote ownership of pets and thus the rate of heart disease in the general population should fall dramatically. But if the public take from the shelter such animals as cats, parrots and domestic hamsters, will it reduce number of heart disease in general population? The evidence given by the author has specifically stated that dog's ownership correlates with the reduction of the heart disease and consequently, if general public adopt pets other than dogs, the author's claim seems to be unsupported and prediction is unlikely.

In conclusion, the argument states that dog's ownership may help to combat heart disease but at the same time, the author has failed to demonstrate correlation between having a dog and reducing chances of continuing heart problems. Moreover, the belief that promotion of pet's ownership will reduce the average number of heart disease in population is unwarranted as well and thus it may not happen.

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Average: 6.7 (3 votes)
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argument 1 -- OK

argument 2 -- OK

argument 3 -- not OK. other factors can also lead to heart disease. For example, people might decide to consume unhealthy food due to adverse economic situation or opt for shortening their exercise time...
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 457 350
No. of Characters: 2303 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.624 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.039 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.693 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 173 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 132 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.562 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.689 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.875 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.385 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.611 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.14 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5