A Busy Pony

A few days ago, I shared a photo heavy post of Izzy playing with a traffic cone in Laurel's turn out. I then went and bought two cones at Home Depot so that he would have one (the other other is stored for later use) to play with at home.

I very much wish that I had motion activated cameras in his stall because his "house" is a disaster area when I get there each afternoon, and I'd sure like to see how it happens. While the sprinklers are working in the arena, I spend a half an hour each afternoon tidying things up. I clean the manure out of his stall, gather up the scattered hay, drag his feed bin back to where it goes, dig a toy out of his water trough, and gather the rest of his things and place them in the center of his outside run - like this:

House cleaning!

The big feed tub is inside.

That's how I left things last Thursday. By Friday afternoon, it all looked like this.

Hay cube tub dragged to the middle.

Both Jolly balls (one of which he has permanently mashed) flung to the far reaches of his stall.

Cone crammed into one of his many self-dug pits.

Rubber feed tub serves as a toy because if I put anything in it, he flips it over immediately and all feed is wasted. It has been discarded into the farthest corner of his play pen.

Most afternoons, at least one of his toys has ben flung outside of his stall. In the past, it was a Jolly ball, or two. More recently, he has learned to pick the cone up and flip it over his fence. And again, the black rubber feed pan is often either floating in his water trough, or it has sunk to the bottom where I have to fish it out. The Jolly balls have taken a swim as well.

He gets ridden five to seven days a week for no less than forty-five minutes, and sometimes it's even an hour. On the days he doesn't get ridden, he gets turned out. Last Friday, he spent two hours over at Laurel's. The dude is just a very busy guy. If anyone has some ideas for defeating boredom cheaply and quietly, I'd love to hear it. 

The only caveat is that hanging stuff has proven to be a problem as he has gotten hung up at least three different ways on items that were designed to be hung safely for horses. Fortunately, someone has found him and freed him before he was able to hurt himself. Aside from hanging items, what else can I safely toss in there to keep his brain occupied?