Chase Is On The Case opens the breeding account for the Fergusons

For all the success Jo and Dylan Ferguson have tasted as a Group One winning training partnership, there is a particular kind of joy reserved for the horse you breed yourself, and on Friday night at Alexandra Park they felt it for the first time. Chase Is On The Case, their homebred son of Majestic Son, cleared his maidens at just his fifth start, and in doing so handed his breeders a milestone no sale topper ever could.

The capable three-year-old had long carried an air of ability, having placed at Group Three level as a juvenile last season without ever finishing further back than fourth on raceday. On Friday he had the perfect pilot in Peter Ferguson, who was happy to bide his time early before working off the markers and into the one-one with a lap to run. The pair peeled off the back of the leader turning for home and ground down Shard Avatar in the shadows of the post to win by a neck.

For Jo, the feeling was unlike any other in a stable that has known plenty of big nights.

"That was the first time we'd bred one and had a win at the races, so it was a different sort of feeling," she said. "He's only three, and only the first half of his three year old season, but it feels like a long journey. It feels a long time from the moment you choose the stallion for the mare. It was pretty exciting."

Chase Is On The Case came about almost by chance. The Fergusons had stayed in touch with Abbie, who owned his dam Meander With Earl, and when the chance came to lease the mare for a season they did not think twice.

"We just leased her for the year and got Chase," Jo said.

The naming was a family affair too, the job falling to the Fergusons' daughter, and a theme was born.

"He was the first of many Paw Patrol named horses in our stable," Jo laughed.

If the name was light-hearted, the horse came with the family's well-known edge.

"He definitely had the family's quirkiness, that was pretty evident early on," Jo said. "Even while he was still on his mother he was showing signs of the toughness and difficultness of some of the family."

The Fergusons knew the type intimately, having worked closely with his half-sister Rosie, and Peter Ferguson remembered the very same streak in Meander With Earl as a racemare.

What pleased them most was that Chase always knew when to down tools and when to dig in.

"He still showed that when the job was on, he knuckled down and got into it," Jo said. "That's always a good sign, when they know when to be professional and when not to be."

He has not had it entirely his own way, with the odd soundness niggle meaning the Fergusons have given him every chance to mature, spacing his runs last season rather than chasing every heat.

That is where owning your own comes into its own.

"He's just a family horse," Jo said, the ownership shared between herself and Dylan and both sets of parents. "As much as we love all our owners and the part they play, it's nice to be able to make a decision that doesn't affect anyone else. If we want to skip a week, we can, and we don't have to justify it to anyone."

Chase Is On The Case is out of the Earl mare Meander With Earl, a six-race winner who bookended her career with a Listed placing in the Greenlane Cup, beaten only a length and a half by the champion I Can Doosit and his full brother Sno's Big Boy.

Her finest hour was arguably her fourth in the 2010 Rowe Cup behind Sundon's Gift, beaten little more than a length over the gruelling 3200m against a field of that calibre.

Now retired, she owns a record most breeders only dream of.

Chase Is On The Case's win made her a perfect seven from seven, every one of her foals a winner.

And what winners they have been.

Her daughter Little Miss Zig Zag (Love You) was a six-race winner who left the talented five-win entire Bolt For The Hill (What The Hill) for the Burley family before she herself was lost prematurely.

Kay Cee (Majestic Son) won six of her own and raced at the top table, running fourth in the 2020 Group One National Trot behind a trio of modern greats in Sundees Son, Bolt For Brilliance and Majestic Man.

Then there is Rosie (Peak), the half-sister who gave Jo her first black-type training success when she took out the 2023 Group Three Northern Trotting Breeders Stakes at $16, with Dylan in the cart.

The strength sits right up close as well.

Chase Is On The Case's second dam, Meander With Eden, has left a good deal more than just Meander With Earl. She is also the dam of the unraced Monarch Eden, the dam of full sisters Monarch Hill and Inasinglemoment, both by What The Hill, the latter the 2024 Group One Northern Trotting Derby winner.

Meander In Eden (Pernod Eden) was a genuinely handy racemare for Alec Goryl who won 11 and placed on 27 occasions through a brutally tough era of trotting that pitched her against the likes of Lyell Creek, Buster Hanover and Special Way.

She was game to a fault, even fronting up in hopples for her one and only run against the pacers, chasing Yuletsar and company home in the 1999 Franklin Cup.

It is from Rosie that the Fergusons are now building their own broodmare band. She has already left two colts, a yearling by Timoko named I'm Fired Up and a weanling by What The Hill, and is back in foal to Classic Connection.

The Timoko colt is well into his education and showing the right signs.

"The family traits are appearing again in Rosie's foal," Jo said. "The toughness and, hopefully, the will to win. If they're giving us a little bit of grief, as long as they're doing it towards the finish line, it's all good."

He has also worked his way under her skin.

"I'd had all bad luck with chestnuts and said no more," she laughed, "and then Rosie popped out a chestnut with a blaze. She knows my kryptonite."

Not every chapter has been so kind.

The Fergusons bought the mare She Reign's off Gavelhouse for $19,000, a purchase everyone assured them was a steal.

"We're still waiting for that bargain to cash in," Jo said. "She's cost us a lot of money, and a lot of heartache losing the foals."

A Volstead foal died, two breeding seasons slipped by with nothing to show, and yet the mare's place in the paddock was never once in doubt.

"She's very special to Dylan, she was his number one horse for a long time," Jo said. "As much as we'd love more foals out of her, if she never had another we'd still be happy to have her there."

Then, just when it was most needed, came the reward.

Her first foal, Micky Hill (What The Hill), bolted in on debut as a juvenile for Mark Purdon last month, a timely boost to the page and a long-awaited return on faith.

For all the setbacks, Jo is besotted with the breeding game, which is no small irony given where she started.

"I studied equine nursing when I was younger, and 90% of the course was made up of breeding and foals, all the stuff that can go wrong," she said. "I was 17 and I thought, I'm never breeding, there's way too much that can go wrong."

Experience has not entirely cured the nerves.

"A lot of it is ignorance is bliss," she said. "The anxiety I get when the mares are close to foaling is off the charts, because I just think of all the things that can happen."

What there is not, tellingly, is a ceiling on what she will spend to do it properly.

"There's no budget," she said. "We just pay what we've got to pay and look after them."

That philosophy was forged through a leap of faith, and it paid off in the most spectacular fashion only last month.

Heading into the Karaka yearling sale, the Fergusons resolved to plant a stake at the pointy end of the market, stretching to $90,000 for a Bold Eagle colt they could scarcely afford in order to prove they belonged in the best races.

That colt was Apollo Eleven, who duly delivered the couple their maiden Group One when he accounted for the favoured Duke of Bourbon at Alexandra Park, Peter Ferguson again in the sulky.

The experience only hardened a view Jo had long held, that the dear horses are in fact the easy ones to move.

"The good horses sell themselves," she said. "They market themselves, and it's easy to promote them."

That outlook shapes the whole approach.

"The only thing that differs in a horse is the purchase price, because they all cost the same to train," Jo said. "So you may as well buy a good one, or buy the one you want, and it's the same with breeding. There's no such thing as a cheap stallion, because the foaling down and all the issues cost the same regardless. We just choose the stallions we want, because they're the horses we want to race."

It is why their homebreds are increasingly staying in house.

Where once they pictured selling them on, attachment and ambition have won out.

"We grow attached to them, and these are the ones we want to race," Jo said. "Rather than put them through the sales and watch someone else enjoy them, we offer shares to some of our owners and race them ourselves."

They will still shop at the yearling sales, only a little less now, with a few of their own coming through each season.

As for Chase Is On The Case, the road ahead points south.

The plan is to send him down for a stint of beach and straight line work, with Dylan set to base himself there for a spell alongside a few of the team.

Jo has always liked him as a stayer, and the target is anything but modest.

"The Derby is the aim as a three year old," she said, "but it's just one step at a time."

One step at a time is how the best families are built, and the Fergusons have made a flying start.

For a couple who choose the stallion, foal the mare, break the youngster and live every anxious night of it, Friday's win was the one that counted.

The first they have bred, the first to salute, and on the strength of what is coming through behind him, surely a long way from the last.