Chrissy: President & Founder
Over 31 years of animal-handling experience
Animals have always been a huge part of Chrissy's life, whether they were her own or those she took care of in various other positions involving animals such as an internship at The Flushing Meadow Park Zoo working with bears and other wild animals. Although Chrissy then started a career in the entertainment field working at NBC and Paramount Pictures in Manhattan, animal positions always appealed more to her than the cut-throat corporate world. She soon found herself back with animals - this time at a commercial horse farm on Long Island.
After moving to Upstate, NY, the idea of starting Chrissy's Castle of Critters came about when Chrissy, herself, could not take a vacation for over seven years because she didn't trust anyone to take care of her own menagerie of animals, which at the time included three horses, a dog, two cats, nine Guinea Hens, a Cockatiel, and a Parakeet. As Chrissy puts it, "I thought to myself there must be other people like me who cannot get away because of their animals!" She wanted to help other animal lovers be able to take their vacations every year while still having peace of mind. With that idea, Chrissy put one ad in the local Pennysaver and hand-wrote one flyer for the local supermarket. Word spread quickly about the non-kennel atmosphere and business took off like wildfire!
Since then, because of the success of Chrissy's Castle of Critters, Chrissy had to quit her day job, relocate to a larger facility, and, of course, her staff has grown. She acquired two partners (Ricky and Pete), and a strew of wonderful, dedicated animal lovers to help care for animals both on and off premises. According to Chrissy, "The key to our success is we all enjoy what we do. If all of us didn't love animals, there would be no point in even being in this line of work."