Cooking food outside for the animals (6)
I believe the answer is:
ponies
'the animals' is the definition.
The answer is an example.
'cooking food outside' is the wordplay.
'cooking' becomes 'on' (I've seen this in other clues).
'food' becomes 'pies' (pies are a type of food).
'outside' means one lot of letters goes inside another (some letters go outside others).
'on' placed within 'pies' is 'PONIES'.
'for' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for ponies that I've seen before include "Small breeds of horse" , "rides" , "Small horses" .)