PT 9, LR1, Question 12: Purebred Dogs Forum

[ehall20]

I understand why choice A is correct, but to me it seems like C is equally correct.

The conclusion only states that dog owners who want to "reduce the risk of incurring costly medical bills" should choose nonpurebred dogs. It doesn't say anything about dog owners who want to reduce the risk of paying medical bills to fix genetic abnormalities.

Therefore, If purebred dogs tended to have a shorter lifespan, wouldn't this mean there was a shorter time period to incur medical expenses? I understand this might be a bit of a stretch, but the correct answer seems like it's a bit of a stretch as well.

[princeR]

The assumption is that because purebred dogs are more prone to genetically determined abnormalities they will have to undergo expensive surgeries to treat them. However, what if these genetically determined abnormalities don't actually do anything and in fact "do not seriously affect a dog's general well-being", if that were true, than surgery wouldn't even be necessary.

Answer choice C tells us about life spans. We don't know anything about life spans. While it might be true that they live shorter, that doesn't mean anything. You would have to make the unwarranted assumption that as a dog ages it is more prone to illnesses that require costly medical procedures. This is an unwarranted assumption.

To be honest, I was stuck for a second with answer choice E. In my head I was thinking that E could possibly mean that you could purchase a nonpurebred dog thinking that it would have no genetic abnormalities but than it it actually could. If this were true, than the prescription to bug a nonpurebred dog would lose a little strength because both breeds could potentially have genetic abnormalities.

A still weakens the conclusion the most.

[ehall20]

Thanks for your response, I totally agree with you on why A weakens the argument. My assumption with C wasn't that as a dog ages it's more prone to illnesses, but simply that it would be pretty difficult for a dead dog to incur medical expenses.

If we assume that a nonpurebred lives 20 years and a purebred lives 10 years (these figures are not necessary, but please bear with me for the sake of argument), then that means that the purebred owner is going to have 10 years less time where medical expenses might be incurred.

The conclusion specifies dog owners who want to "reduce the risk of incurring costly medical bills". For the span of time the average purebred would tend to be dead and the average nonpurebred would still be alive (10 years with my earlier assumption), this effectively reduces the risk of medical expenses to 0 for the purebred owner (because, ya know, their dog is dead).

Edit: Rereading my post I came across as a bit of a deuchecanoe. I'm not saying you're wrong, and I understand that my reasoning doesn't lead to the correct answer. What I'm trying to figure out is if my reasoning itself is faulty, or if it's logically sound and I just missed what the test-makers were looking for.

[03152016]

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[ehall20]

Thanks for the response, I see the errors in my ways (no snarkasm).