My dog Watson is an urban hunter.

By which I mean he is famous for finding the most random of things to eat on his everyday walks through his very ordinary and clean small town neighborhood.

His finds in just the last few months includes:

• A full package of raw bratwurst nestled in a bed of day lilies (yes I have questions)
• Pastries, from half donuts to muffin tops to pizza crusts, left behind in evergreen bushes
• Fries, dinner rolls and stale bread (the last left out for the squirrels)
• Half a Girl Scout shortbread cookie that he smelled on the top of a retaining wall and then stopped and barked at me until I moved the evergreen branch that was hiding it and exposed the cookie so he could grab it
• Bait fish the neighborhood sportfishing charter captain drops down the storm drain
• Half a WAFFLE dropped outside the local daycare (someone missed their breakfast)

You get the picture. Not a walk goes by without him finding and eating something.

I'm on speed dial to the Public Works department calling in roadkill so they can come and pick it up before we walk by again (seriously, they know my name and number. To save face at the volume of calls I place to them I told them the neighborhood organized and made me point person.)

We take 3 walks a day, so his little habit does not make life easy.

And for the 8 years he’s been mine I’ve worked to solve this through the best 2 options I’ve been able to find:

First option: Train him to be a more disciplined walker, and be vigilant myself, so I can easily steer him away from any temptation. I’ve done this to the tune of thousands of dollars of training, and when I tell you this dog listens to me and heels, trust me that he does. He’s a great walker.

AND ALSO his nose is much better at its job than my eyes, so no matter how well he’s walking and how closely I’m paying attention, he always finds something to eat before I see it. Trust me when I tell you that you have absolutely no idea how much food trash is sitting around unnoticed in your neighborhood until you have a dog like Watson to point it out. It's straight up shocking.

Second Option: Attempt to eliminate the problem by not walking as much and instead filling his very high energy needs elsewhere.

Great idea you say! I would agree. Until I realize:

Sometimes I take him running and swimming at the beach where he 1) finds dead fish to eat and 2) drinks dodgy water and (see dead fish) eats dodgy things that give him giardia. Not great. (pro tip: you do not want your dog to get giardia, it's not a great experience).

What about the dog park? Well at the dog park he finds walnuts to eat (he’s allergic) and/or dead rodents. Also a recipe for very bad things.

Turns out trying to find an easy button to replace the not so easy walks isn’t so, well, easy.

It’s almost like committing to owning a 75 pound irish setter/lab mix (aka high energy and wicked smart dog) isn’t always easy, but it is something I want so I accept that life with him is sometimes going to be about the less hard option instead of the easy option.

And that’s reality: When you want something, there may not be an easy button. It may be about finding and embracing the least hard option.

I think about this a lot these days because small business ownership has gotten harder in the last few years. Especially for those of you marketing and operating online.

Attention spans are shorter. Client cash flow is tighter. Marketing that used to be easy isn’t working any longer.

That doesn’t mean you don’t have options, doesn’t mean you can’t still have a wildly successful business.

It might just mean you have to accept that some of what used to feel easy is now about embracing the least hard.

Reminds me of a tweet from Andrew Yeung, a Google alum and investor:

I’m not scared of choosing my hard, both when it comes to entertaining Watson and for building my business. You? Hit reply and tell me what hard you're going to choose.