Bloodlines ARE important to me - maybe it is all those genetics courses I took in college and grad school, which I just loved.
What I did was lots of research. I looked at photos in magazines, on websites, live horses on farms and then at shows. Horses on farms of breeders that I respected and trusted got extra attention, and those bloodlines that you don't find on the east coast aren't in my barn either. I also checked bloodlines on the AMHA Studbook. From all this info, some patterns started to emerge; for example I noticed a lot of the farms whose horses I liked used Blue Boy bred mares. Then when I actually met horses wth the bloodlines I liked, I felt pretty good about my research.
In my search of bloodlines, I look very hard at the MARE's side of the pedigree too as I don't want to see any big "holes" with unknown horses. Most of our mini's dams were show horses. Also, I breed for Pintos and I don't want any Apps in the pedigree. And there are certain other horses I shy away from based on my research. Those are my criteria, which probably explains why we have so few minis!!! If the mare has a breeding history, then what she produces because as important - if not more so - than anything in her pedigree. For example, our last purchase was a Rowdy bred mare (on dam's side), and daughter of Jefferson Halls Gambler, who had had 4 gorgeous foals and three of them were sired by OUR STALLION'S PATERNAL HALF-BROTHER. And of course this was a breeder we trusted. That purchase was a no-brainer.
From all this info we ended up with minis with Rowdy, Blue Boy, Gold Melody Boy/Buckeroo, and King Supreme bloodlines. All except that last purchase have 2 of these 4 in their pedigrees. And our one and only live foal (lMax) has Rowdy, Blue Boy and Buckeroo in his pedigree. Yes, not any of them are very close, but there are also a lot of OTHER nice minis in there contributing genes.