Matt grew up in Green Springs in north-western Ohio, living his earliest years on his family's dairy farm of Brown Swiss cattle. His father, Thomas Craig, sold off the herd in the late sixties when many small family-run dairy operations were being competitively replaced by larger, corporate dairy operations. His father took a managerial position with the Kroger Food Store in town and his mother, Joyce, returned to college to earn her degree in Elementary Education. But the family remained on the farmstead, leasing the acreage they previously worked yet allowing Matt and his siblings to still grow up in a country atmosphere. Matt fondly recalls he, his brothers, and their friends, all playing basketball throughout the winters in a full-sized court they created out of the old hay loft in the cow barn.

Linda was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and moved to Cincinnati in the sixth grade when her father, Richard Gregg, took a teaching position with the Ohio College of Applied Science, now part of the University of Cincinnati. With the move to Cincinnati, her mother, Harriet, returned to her chosen profession of Nursing with a large family-oriented clinical practice. While Linda grew up in the suburbs, she was always deeply interested in all animals and shared that interest with a next door neighbor, David Oehler, who now happens to be one of the Avian Keepers at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her family had dogs, cats, parakeets, mice, and goldfish. Box tortoises and toads would occasionally be kept temporarily, then released back into the wild. Linda even owned a white leghorn rooster for a time - an extra chick the high school zoology teacher allowed her to take home from an order for a class science experiment.

Matt and Linda met in 1981 while still undergraduate students at the University of Cincinnati - Matt in Civil Engineering and Linda in Anthropology. They relocated to the Dallas area in 1983 after Matt accepted a position with Halff Associates, Inc., an Engineering and Scientific Consulting firm. Linda went to work for a small management consulting firm until she returned to her studies at the University of Texas at Arlington in 1992, where she finished up her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology within a year and then continued on with her graduate studies in the same department. Matt finished his Masters of Engineering in Civil Engineering with an Environmental focus also at UTA. They married in May of 1986.

After living for awhile in an older East Dallas neighborhood, and having acquired between them three dogs and two cats (and a few goldfish!), Linda and Matt found the house they wanted with a few acres plus a barn in Red Oak, Texas, in the Spring of 1987. One of their neighbors just happened to have three Spanish, or "scrub," goat "nannies." And the Craig's young English Bulldog, Obie, just happened to enjoy chasing after them on the occasions when he had slipped under the field fencing! Linda was dismayed - she knew that such behavior was intolerable for a dog living in the country around livestock. She began immediately to find another home for him. It was during a conversation with Obie's obedience class instructor that Linda was advised to go buy a goat herself, and to teach Obie that the goat was a member of the family...and Obie would have to learn to behave properly at all times around it.  She first laughed at the idea - but then she went home and talked with Matt. They agreed to make a serious attempt to remediate Obie's bad behavior. Within a week, they had located a six-month old nubian-alpine cross that was being retired from a petting zoo and was socialized to dogs. "Soozie" came home with the Linda and Matt - opinionating loudly, her airplane ears standing out and moving like directional antennas all the way to Red Oak, as she rode in the back of their Subaru station wagon.

It was only a short time - less than a week - and Soozie had endeared herself to both Linda and Matt. She followed each one around whenever they were outside, running circles around them or "pawing" them if they were not paying her enough attention. Linda bought a couple young sheep, barbado wethers, and brought them home to be Soozie's companions. Soozie immediately had them following her mesmerizing lead, and it was apparent that she enjoyed the power! But it was also soon apparent to both Matt and Linda that Soozie was not as sound in health as she should have been. With the purchase of the wethers, Linda noticed that, in comparison to those of the wethers, Soozie's knees were very swollen and seemed warm to the touch. Then, Soozie developed a sniffle and a cough that turned into a bad respiratory infection. They took her to the vet who prescribed ampicillin. It worked for awhile on her infection, but as soon as the dosing stopped her respiratory problems began to return. A second treatment came and went with the same sequential results.

Linda went to the public library and brought home as many books as she found on dairy goats and goats. It was in these books that she first read about CAE (Caprine Arthritic Encephalitis) as well as Mycoplasmosis. Soozie's condition might indicate either. Because of her age, Linda felt it was most likely a chronic Mycoplasmosis infection and that there was a great likelihood that she might pass it on to the wethers if this was the case. The third trip to the vet was Soozie's last. The cloudy aspirate from one knee did suggest Mycoplasmosis. Soozie was quietly euthanized...and Linda internally railed against her own ignorance as well as the conditions that would have caused Soozie's infection in the first place - perhaps at birth, perhaps later at the petting zoo. She knew that it could have been prevented, but that Soozie's former owners had not cared enough - and a vibrant life was short-lived because of disinterest.

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