My thoughts on RPSI - It tells me NOTHING about the quality of the horse. Pretty much I can expect to pay $x for an AHHA registered youngster (give or take a little).
There are RPSI youngsters that I wouldn’t pay $1000 for and some that I’d love to have but could never afford. I will look at an RPSI horse, but “being RPSI registered” doesn’t tell me much of anything about the horse except that it has documented pedigree. The same can be said for BWP and a number of other very inclusive studbooks.
Here’s what I love about RPSI - Assuming I know a good horse (and let’s just assume for the sake of the thread that I do) if for some other reason I can’t get my horse registered with AHS, AHHA (due to distance, using an outside stallion, or other logistical stumbling blocks) I can still get full European papers. A very nice RPSI registered filly can eventually be inspected for inclusion into the mare books of the more prestegious registries. BWP has the same benefits and accepts a similar quality of horses.
It bears repeating that there are VERY NICE HORSES in both registries. For a gelding, breed registry does little once the horse gets it’s foal papers. For a mare, so long as the horse can eventually get into the stud books you WANT to use, it doesn’t really matter either. The nonsense about the “prestige” of the brand is ridiculous to me as long as the registry used will not limit the future breeding options of the horse. I know that with RPSI, GOV and BWP the horses remain eligible for use in other studbooks.
If you use American registries, you may well be excluded from this. I don’t know enough about OLD-NA to know how it’s accepted in other registries, but it is not a European registry, or even associated with the German Oldenburg Verband (GOV). Of course if you produce a “future gelding” it doesn’t really matter anyhow. Around here, Old-NA is considered about the same in terms of prestige anyhow.
With any registry you throw out here you’re going to find people who say “mine is better than theirs” for whatever reason. Not sure where it comes from since most of the open bloodlines registries share very heavily. There are some that are more closed and I would consider a “breed” such as Trakehners, Holsteiners, Hanoverians, etc, but for non-specific warmblood registries (GOV, RPSI, BWP, Z), the horses can vary wildly in terms of type and ability regardless of their brand. Look beyond the brand and judge the horse in front of you on it’s own merrits. They all have the building blocks to produce some fabulous horses.
