I don't really care about changing anyone's mind, or about forcing my opinion on anyone 
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I beg to differ with you here. The fact is, you express your opinion with such a close-minded intensity that it's hard to believe that you could ever accept that someone has a right to a differing opinion; you are unwilling to accept that even one shred of an opposing opinion could have some validity to it.
You present your arguments so forcefully in this thread, tearing apart other contradictory posts sentence by sentence, that one might believe you think we should just ban the possession of animals altogether. Dogs, cats, goats, horses, cows, pigs, etc, should all be set free because if they could speak for themselves this is what they would tell us they want. Incidentally, horses don't even "speak" to one another the way you might imagine, they use body language to communicate; this is how even we can tell if a horse enjoys what he is doing.
Just because an activity like the chuckwagon races is dangerous and has risks doesn't mean that the animals might not enjoy it. We certainly know that
you don't enjoy it and that's fine, but to insinuate that because the animals can't speak for themselves must mean that they feel the same way you do is ludicrous.
I could easily argue alongside you on this topic as I understand where you come from with many of your arguments and agree that some of the arguments have merit. However, I simply choose to favor my current view over yours. I would challenge you to humor me and pretend you're going to a debate on this topic not knowing which side you will have to defend and educate yourself accordingly.