Joani Mink was in Australia on an agricultural exchange program and the first thing her host family did was assign her a cutting horse. They didn’t show cutting horses; they actually used them on their cattle ranch. A big part of Mink’s job was separating yearlings and settling the cows so they wouldn’t be wild.
When she returned to the States her dad got her a cutting horse. She put off college for a short time and went to work for Tom Campbell. Campbell trained Mink and the horse. She walked to the herd for the first time in 1997 and showed her own horse as an NCHA member in 2001.