IN JUNE 1988, Scottish couple Nuala and Jamie Gardner had a son, Dale. As a baby he was pleasingly passive, as a toddler, a bawling nightmare, unable to empathise or properly communicate, emotionally ...

Nuala Gardner’s autistic son was violent and withdrawn. Then Henry the retriever arrived – and saved the family. Julia Stuart reports At one stage, Nuala Gardner felt so hopeless about the future of ...

Nowadays it's common to meet someone diagnosed with autism. But almost 20 years ago, it was a very different story. Then the condition was little understood or catered for in the community. In a new ...

At one stage, Nuala Gardner felt so hopeless about the future of her severely autistic son that she walked into the kitchen and starting preparing a fatal dose of painkillers and sleeping pills. Dale, ...

WRITER Nuala Gardner penned a bestseller about her family's golden retrievers - who were the key to unlocking her son and giving hope to thousands of autistic children. A MUM whose two children suffer ...

Tackling a novel dealing with a subject such as autism was a prospect I was far from relishing. Perhaps due to my own ignorance, I had little experience of the subject matter, let alone been aware of ...