Photos courtesy of the Yarden family.
Miriam Yarden was one of the most extraordinary people I’ve known.
Yarden was a mother, a grandmother and a great-grandmother. She was an author, a linguist and an intellect. She was a survivor, an educator, a scholar, a student and—most noteworthy, especially in her strong opinion—a fierce, tenacious champion of animals.
Yarden passed away on February 28, leaving an endowment of love, wisdom and education to everyone whose path she crossed.
“She’s part of the view that I’ll always have forever more about the importance of making a dog whole,” said Deborah Turner, author of the Wheely Willy series.
Yarden was born on January 10, 1929, to Elisabeth and Alexander Miller, in Kapos Var, Hungary. The family narrowly escaped Nazi persecution before the occupation of Hungary in 1939, fleeing to Israel. Her beloved brother David lost his life during the War for Independence in Israel while heroically volunteering as a field medic, inspiring Yarden to go to England to train as a nurse to support the war effort and honor her brother’s memory.
Yarden wed architect Urie Yarden and relocated with him to the United States in the 1950s. She gave birth to her daughter, Ann David, nicknamed Andy. Her family, along with Yarden’s mother, subsequently relocated to Southern California, where her surviving brother, Michael, lived with his family.
Miriam Yarden (left) with granddaughter Kyla and daughter Andy.
Even with a family and a demanding position at British Airways, where Yarden’s fluency in Hungarian, Hebrew, English, French, and German made her an excellent choice to work with international clientele, Yarden never sat still. She seemed to have found a time warp that allowed her to quench what her daughter called “her insatiable thirst for knowledge” by studying child psychology, nursing, law, world languages, religion, science fiction and, prophetically, animal education.
After retiring, Yarden devoted her life and her relentless temperament to animals. She was co-founder of Long Beach’s first dog park, Recreation Dog Park on Seventh Street and worked tirelessly to get it operative. Gary Hovanian remembers meeting Yarden at the park while he was walking his German shepherd, Mega, in the early ’90s and was inspired to join the board of directors as a result.
“I even met my wife, Becky, there—she often refers to Miriam as her second mom,” Hovanian said. “I don’t know if I could handle another mom, but I rest assured knowing that Miriam was there for me just as she was for all those that knew her.”
Yarden shared her expertise in animal behavior in Hey Pup! Let’s Talk! Your Canine’s Problems Solved (Hauppage, New York: Barron’s Educational Series, 2000) and wrote pet-behavior-related material for School News Roll Call. She was a contributing writer for Pulse, the Southern California Veterinary Medical Association journal.
She was active in such organizations as the Southern California Veterinary Medical Association, the Animal Behavior Society, American Veterinarians for Israel (AVI), the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT), and the Dog Writers Association of America. She served as behavior consultant to Orange County Animal Control and was particularly proud of the work she did consulting for the Long Beach Police K9 Officers Unit.
And she opened her own business—Aurora Animal Behavior, which provided education, advice, and support for Southern California families for over 40 years. She’d stress that she was an educator, not a therapist or a trainer. And she educated pet owners as much as she did the pets! She was successful in connecting with a network of professional veterinarians, many of whom recommended her to their patients as their number-one behavior consultant.
Yarden taught obedience classes at the pet-supply store Doggie in the Window, which Turner formerly owned, located on Anaheim Street and Belmont Avenue. Turner is an animal rescuer, and the ones she saved and continues to save had problems that were different from those of pets of responsible owners who’d brought them in. Turner sees a lot of neglect and mistreatment in rescued pets; Yarden, she said, taught her what to do to get them on the road to adoptability.
“She helped make the animal whole again so the pet could live as an inside family member and not chained up outside or wandering the streets,” Turner said. “She made you feel that even with a worst-case scenario, everything would be OK. People just accept bad behavior, she told me—a lot of people start and don’t go back again. Miriam’s now a part of how I look at things now.”
Yarden also co-founded Friends of Long Beach Animals (FOLBA), the city’s longest-existing animal advocacy organization. In her tenure as treasurer, she was instrumental in getting the bylaws established and also used her extensive knowledge of dog training to educate dog owners about their pets’ behavior. Yarden took no prisoners when it came to humans who lived with animals.
“She was a know-it-all, but she knew it all!” FOLBA past president Shirley Vaughan said. “She was the reason for a lot of animals to keep the homes she’d found. Whenever someone would adopt a dog or cat from the shelter and it had behavior problems, somehow we’d [FOLBA’s board] wind up getting the call, and she helped many, many of those people help keep their animals. She did this up until the last year of her life. She had the knowledge of what to do—and she did it for free for FOLBA. She was a champion for animals in deeper layers than just training.
“And oh, my gosh—she broke a hip once, and she still went on. Nothing kept that woman down.”
Including cancer. Yarden survived cancer once and continued to have at it bout by bout, never giving up. Vaughan said that up until the final three weeks of her life, Yarden continued to teach puppy-training classes at Bixby Animal Clinic one evening a week.
“She was a fighter for the animals and for herself as well,” Vaughan said.
Miriam Yarden was my friend, too. She would—literally—burst upon the scene when it featured anything to do with animals. She once charged in to a FOLBA WALK for the Animals, overshot her mark and fell over a table. She and I laughed about her enthusiasm for years.
When the publishers of School News Roll Call asked me to find a FOLBA columnist and FOLBA recommended Miriam, I was elated. I’d edit the articles, from which her relentless insistence on doing the right thing by a pet boomed, and you’d better pay attention. She and I used to kvetch about the word limit we had to follow—it would take me three times as long to edit one of Miriam’s articles than anyone else’s. I didn’t want to muffle that ardent, relentless voice—every word she wrote was important and needed to be read. And I’d always tremble at not having done her justice.
Simply being in Miriam Yarden’s presence made me feel that, as Deborah Turner said, everything will be OK. As for rest in peace, I can almost hear her booming comeback: “Not on your life!”
Watch over us, Miriam. You got as much love from us all as you gave out.
“Blessed be she who is both furious and magnificent.”
~ “calloused: a field journal,’’ Taylor Rhodes
There will be a celebration of Miriam Yarden’s life at the Recreation Park band shell (close to the casting pond) at 4900 East Seventh Street in Long Beach, on August 4 from 7:00PM to 9:00 PM. On-leash dogs are welcome.
Thanks go to Gary Hovanian, who provided most of the material for Miriam Yarden’s obituary.