Cooper's Clydesdales prepare for the Royal Adelaide Show: Keith joins the team for a day in the Adelaide City region of South Australia

Clydesdale used to be a part of every country town and farm, and for that matter the city streets where they were delivery horses. These days it's the Coopers Clydesdales that keep up the tradition. And with the Royal Show beginning soon, Mike Keogh will tell you it's not easy to get them up to championship standard especially when you've got a young recruit like Arthur. He's going to make his debut in the main arena.

For the past 21 years, husband and wife team of Mike Keogh and Liz Murphy have been winning ribbons, trophies and plenty of hearts with their magnificent Clydesdale team. They run the famous Coopers Brewery Clydesdale Team - keeping alive a beer delivery tradition that began with Coopers at the turn of last century and continued right up until 1947.

No Grand Parade at the Adelaide Show would be complete without the Coopers team proudly strutting their stuff. In fact, they travel Australia competing in shows. But behind the gleaming harness and immaculate grooming - there's a lot of hard work which starts at their stud near Oakbank. And as any 'show pony' will tell you, you need to start from the ground up - with the right shoes of course.

Every 6 to 8 weeks Graham the farrier skilfully wrestles gentle giants like Charlie, carefully trimming their hooves and replacing or reshaping their massive shoes… and it's vital he gets it right.

Graham, Farrier: "The horse has to take its weight on what's called the wall of the foot which is right around the outside of the foot. So the shoe has to sit only on the wall - if he's taking weight on the sole, which is inside here or on the frogs - too much weight will send him lame."

It takes Graham a couple of hours of backbreaking work to shoe just one horse and back in the days when Coopers had 200 horses delivering their beer, not surprisingly they had a full time farrier. This manicure will have Charlie looking his best for next week's show but Mike's still got a little bit more work to do with a couple of his other charges.

Mike Keogh, Cooper's Clydesdales: "This is Arthur. He's a bit of a special horse to us because he's one we bred. He's three years old and we're hoping for a lot of good future with this horse in the showring."

This will be Arthur's first Royal Show so Mike's keen to get him harnessed up for a bit of roadwork. Mike shows us inside the tackle shed - a veritable treasure trove for the working horse enthusiast. That includes a couple of Coopers' original beer delivery carts - complete with hand-painted line work that will be dusted off for the show.

Then there's the show harness - a sweet leather smelling handcrafted work of art. Five sets of show harness - each taking a year and a half to make and costing a staggering $20,000 each. But it's the working harness for Arthur and George today as we hit the back-roads for a training session.

Out on the back roads you can see why people fall in love with these creatures. Their brisk, jaunty action, which sets them apart from virtually all other breeds is enthralling.

Mike Keogh, Cooper's Clydesdales: "These back roads are good training tracks for us. We can teach the horses to pull without distractions like traffic. Arthur, our new recruit is going quite well. He's not mature yet. Next year he'll weigh about 800 kilos while seven year old George a thousand kilos. That's a tonne.

"It's easy to break in a horse to pull the cart but it takes a long time to get them into the other things that go with it. Probably about a year or so of full on training building up to be able to work in the brewery team."

That includes difficult manoeuvres like carefully stepping sideways - vital for getting out of the way of passing traffic while the beer was unloaded. It's amazing control - especially while hitched to a 4 tonne cart. And it shows the special connection that's possible between man and horse. It's clear Mike and his team of Clydesdales have a special bond.

You can see Mike and his team at this year's Royal Adelaide Show, which kicks off on Friday September 4 and runs until Saturday the 12th. Gates open daily from 9am.

Royal Adelaide Show
Goodwood Road
Wayville
Fri 4 - Sat 12
Open daily

Published 30th August 2009