Sherwood Park groomer brings Sin City style to reality TV

Former resident among 12 contestants on cable TV’s ‘Groomer Has It’

Jennifer Fong
The Edmonton Journal
Saturday, April 11, 2009

Sherwood Park's Krista Castellarin will compete against 11 other contestants on the Animal Planet reality series Groomer Has It, as they shampoo and shear their way through crazy challenges, from grooming a pot-bellied pig to styling the participants in a doggie wedding.
Photograph by: Greg Southam, The Journal, The Edmonton Journal

Two years in Alberta has done nothing to take Vegas out of Krista Castellarin.

Everything about the fast-talking, raven-haired, pink-smocked owner of Sherwood Park pet spa Fabulous Furballs screams Sin City style.

On Tuesday, the professional pet stylist will bring her big Vegas personality to the second season of the Animal Planet reality series Groomer Has It as one of 12 contestants gunning for the title Groomer of the Year.

The last one standing after a series of dignity-stripping challenges -- style a pot-belly pig; prep pups in wedding attire -- wins a lucrative $50,000 cash prize, a new car, and a mobile grooming salon.

While Castellarin is the least experienced among her rivals, don't be surprised if the 29-year-old goes far: to hear her tell it, she's always had a little lady luck on her side.

Born in a small town in Washington state, Castellarin booked it for the flashing lights of the Vegas strip as soon as she could. Still three months shy of high school graduation, she got a job in high-power finance.

Castellarin had applied for a secretarial position because the boss was "super cute," but thanks to uncanny timing, was hired as an account executive on the spot. The firm, she explains, "had their entire staff walk out that Monday to go to a competing finance company." From there, she climbed the corporate ladder, Googling the Wall Street Journal before conference calls so she'd have at least something to say about subprime mortgages and asset-based lending.

A random search on MySpace later, she met Dwayne, an Edmonton boy who worked in the oil industry. In December 2006, mere months after meeting, they married at the Fairmont Hotel MacDonald. Castellarin left the finance business, just as it was turning sour, and moved to Edmonton.

Little did she know, Alberta tends to be more Hudson's Bay Company than, say, the Louis Vuitton boutique at Caesars Palace.

Castellarin had brought her Yorkie Gamble with her to Canada, and all she wanted was to spoil "the love of (her) dog life" with a cashmere Ralph Lauren dog sweater.

She searched high and low, to no avail.

"In Vegas I was used to having all of that at my disposal," she says.

"I literally left for our honeymoon and spent three weeks on the beach in Hawaii going 'Someone should open a dog boutique that really carries real Ralph Lauren, not this knock-off crap,' and just on and on," she says. "And my husband just said, 'Why don't you do that?' " Fabulous Furballs opened in August 2007 after Castellarin travelled extensively to train with the best groomers in North America. Her husband, meanwhile, took up cat grooming, and became a top cat stylist, even better-known than his wife.

In fact, Castellarin tried out for Groomer Has It to get out of Dwayne's shadow.

"Every time we go to an industry event, it's always 'Oh, you're Dwayne's wife and I got so sick of being Dwayne's wife," she says, laughing. "Yes, he shaves cats, but I also groom." Castellarin should soon become pretty recognizable. Cameras captured every one of her tears, tiffs, and trip-ups this past fall during her stay in a crowded L.A. loft with 12 "crazy dog people," some of whom were her former grooming teachers.

"I'm sympathetic now to all celebrities," she says, laughing. "I just wanted to throttle some of the crazy people I'd been living with." She's happy to be back in quiet Sherwood Park at Fabulous Furballs, which she calls "my little slice of home, my little piece of Vegas." The space is all Las Vegas luxe, with a glorious fabric-draped ceiling, tented like a big top. Chandeliers light up the room.

On the shelves are diamond dog collars and real Ralph Lauren, Christian Audigier, Ed Hardy, and Castellarin's own Fabulous Furballs line of petwear.

"There's not a lot of glitz and glam, unfortunately, out there in the grooming market, so I figure if I couldn't find it to buy it, I would just make it," she says.

"Everything I do is just part of my personality."