Local pet groomer proves a cut above

Sherwood Park competitor on U.S. reality TV show

Alyssa Noel
The Edmonton Sun
Monday, April 6, 2009

When Krista Castellarin sees a white fluffy poodle, she instantly has the urge to dye it hot pink.

She also takes great joy in colouring and cutting an animal's fur to look like a turtle, a horse or any variety of objects.

But, arguably, the strangest transformation the Sherwood Park groomer has ever participated in was during a contest on Animal Planet's reality TV show, Groomer Has It.

"I was on a team with a groomer from Chicago with years of experience and another from Massachusetts with years of experience," Castellarin recalled yesterday.

"We turned our white standard poodle into the Hollywood sign. It was a really complex design."

Welcome to the strange, competitive world of animal grooming.

Castellarin is relatively new to grooming, but she was still selected to be the only Canadian contestant in the second season of the reality show.

The former Las Vegas-finance whiz-turned-groomer owns the Sherwood Park animal spa Fabulous Fluffballs, as well as a training school, with her husband, who is the only master feline groomer in Canada.

Although Castellarin had heard of the Groomer Has It show, she never imagined she would compete on it.

In fact, even when Castellarin and four of her students came across a booth recruiting potential contestants at a pet expo in Hershey, Penn., she wasn't immediately interested.

Initially it was her students who were the reality TV hopefuls, she said. The only problem: they weren't U.S. citizens.

Castellarin, who holds dual citizenship, decided to throw her name in the ring instead.

"Wouldn't you know, I interviewed there (in Pennsylvania) and about three weeks later I was on a plane to Hollywood to start filming," she said.

Castellarin had to leave behind her husband and her eight-month-old daughter and, in true reality style, shacked up with the 11 other contestants to compete for a mobile grooming salon, a new Subaru Forester car, a $50,000 cash prize and bragging rights as "Groomer of the Year."

While Castellarin has to be careful not to give away any details of the show - which will begin airing in Canada on April 14 at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Animal Planet - she says the experience really showed her how reputable the Alberta grooming scene is.

American groomers knew of the reputation of their counterparts in this province, she said.

"I realized what a concentration of grooming talent we have in Alberta," she said.

"We have some of the top handlers and groomers here. I gained a whole new appreciation for that."