Macie Pisa, pictured at left, and Corina Stammworthy pose with the trophy they received from winning ABC’s “Pooch Perfect.” The finale aired Tuesday night.

When 2010 Forestville Central School graduate Macie Pisa was younger, she didn’t initially want to be a dog groomer.

But as she’s learned, things don’t always go according to plan. In fact, sometimes things end up going the opposite way, with incredible results tacked on.

Pisa just completed her appearance on ABC’s “Pooch Perfect,” a competitive dog grooming show. And not only did she complete it, her and her partner on the show, Corina Stammworthy, won the competition in what Pisa described as “the strangest experience of my life.”

Pisa grew up around dog grooming. Her mother, Jenny Anson, runs Dressed to Impress Doggie Spa in Dunkirk, and when she was younger, dog grooming was something Pisa realized she did not want to do. But as it happens, that’s the direction life took her.

“Growing up, my mother was a dog groomer,” Pisa said. “I said I was never going to do that. I wanted to move to Seattle and be an artsy interior decorator. But when I moved to Buffalo, dog bather was the easiest job I could get. After doing that for two years, I said I could do it.”

In 2012, Pisa started grooming on her own. She realized the artistic and creative expression she desired could be met through grooming, and when boiled down, the job itself sounds pretty desirable.

“It’s artsy, it’s fun, and you get to work with dogs,” Pisa said. “What else would you want to do? There are lots of avenues you could take out of it too.”

It’s around that time that Pisa’s dog grooming business that she co-owns with Stammworthy, The Laundromutt, opened in Kenmore and she began her own practice. Pisa said the first dog she practiced grooming on, a rescue dog from the Buffalo city shelter, she found a home for at the first competition she went to. Even then, Pisa knew she wanted more out of her newly founded career.

“You could decide you just want to groom pets, but I’ve always had bigger ambitions,” Pisa said. “I’ve always wanted to make a difference. I get to teach, and travel, and be on national television and touch people all over.”

From there, they began going to grooming competitions all across the United States and Canada, and at one of those competitions, they were holding auditions for “Pooch Perfect.” Although Pisa said her and Stammworthy were planning on auditioning regardless, finding themselves at that audition was a fortuitous circumstance.

“We just happened to be at the competition when they were auditioning,” Pisa said. “It was totally random, and we just happened to be at the right place at the right time.”

The original audition process was taxing and confusing for Pisa and Stammworthy, but eventually they got the call they would be on. Originally, it was supposed to occur in February 2020, but everything was derailed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming finally began in the middle of January 2021, following a week of quarantine. And the process was long and taxing for Pisa and the 10 teams competing.

“We filmed for three weeks,” Pisa said. “And we did 14 hours a day, six days a week. It was a grueling process.”

A grueling filming process on top of another challenge Pisa faced: the style of grooming the show entailed.

“There are two different types of competitive grooming,” Pisa said. “There’s very traditional, show dog basic grooming. Then there’s creative grooming, which is what you see on the show.”

“I am not a creative groomer,” Pisa added. “I have never claimed to be, or pretended to be until now. When we auditioned, we thought it would be the style I was good at, like fun pet trims and standard haircuts. But the further we got into it, the more we realized it wasn’t that.”

That forced Pisa to learn a different style of grooming on the fly, but that is where the nature of the show “Pooch Perfect” served as a huge strength. Unlike other reality shows, contestants were kind and helpful to their fellow competitors, on top of Pisa and Stammworthy figuring out all they could do.

“We figured out that as a team, we could do anything,” Pisa said. “Corina also has a genetic disease, which became a big part of our story. It showed we can make it through anything. But we couldn’t have done it without the other competitors. We learned so much from them. It was nice being on a show where I was friends with everybody going into it and we’re still friends now. I knew all but two of the teams before the show. It’s cool to see reality TV where not everyone is petty. We’re in the business of dog grooming, we can’t just be a bunch of jerks.”

And according to Pisa, the producers of the show echoed that sentiment. Pisa said what viewers saw on TV was an accurate portrayal of how the show actually went.

“You can definitely tell who everyone is by what the show gave you,” Pisa said. “Everyone was shown in the light they should have been shown in. They made it pretty obvious they didn’t want to produce a catty, mean show. They wanted it to be fun and family friendly, and show that we would leave our dogs to go help our competitors if they needed it.”

And at the end of it, Pisa and Stammworthy walk away with $100,000, a trophy, “bragging rights,” said in jest, and a lot of exposure for The Laundromutt. On top of that, they come away with an incredible life experience and learning opportunity.

“You have to make sure you’re ready for anything,” Pisa said. “Sometimes things will go wrong. It’s a messy process, but it was a ton of fun. I love learning and to be able to do that on national television, and succeed, was awesome.”