I always like to stay abreast of the latest trends, especially where our language is concerned, so I was delighted when an alert reader sent me an article recently warning of a new wave of political correctness being thrust upon us.

The reader, knowing of my affection for Glory, the black and white springer spaniel who lives at my house, knew I would be interested since this wave of political correctness concerns pets.

I know a lot of people who get upset over political correctness, and certainly, sometimes it gets taken too far. But I don’t worry too much about it. There are times political correctness makes perfect sense.

For instance, you can’t call the person who comes to your house if it catches on fire a fireman anymore, because the person who comes to your house if it catches on fire might just be a woman.

So now we call them firefighters. Likewise, mailmen are now mail carriers and repairmen are now service technicians.

Sometimes, though, it does too far. Remember a few years back when there was the push to call garbage men “sanitation engineers.” That’s a high-faluting name for someone who comes to my house at the crack of dawn and picks up my garbage.

The reason I know they come by my house at the crack of dawn is that Glory alerts me that they have arrived. She does this by getting as close to me in the bed as she can possibly get and barking at a decibel level that I’m sure closely matches a 747 at takeoff.

“It’s OK,” I usually mumble, still half-asleep. “They’re supposed to take our garbage. That’s why we put it outside for them.”

My attitude on political correctness was formed by my Aunt Cecile, who was one of the country’s first female postmasters. Only she wasn’t called a postmaster. She was called a postmistress, a term she hated.

“I’m nodamnbody’s mistress,” she used to say.

Anyway, the article sent to me by the reader said that if you own a dog or a cat or a horse or even a duck-billed platypus, you can no longer refer to it as a pet. You must refer to it using the politically correct term “animal companion.”

“So you have an animal companion?” someone might say to me. “What kind of animal companion do you have?”

“Why, yes, I do,” I might reply. “My animal companion is a black and white dog.”

The article was tongue-in-cheek — at least, I think it was — but I seem to remember this movement taking hold 20 or so years ago, and the folks behind it were serious.

The thought then was to get away from the idea of ownership and to better illustrate the benefits humans get from having a pet, er, animal companion.

On this, there can be no doubt. For more than 14 years, Glory has brought joy to my life, and in return, I have given her a warm bed, plenty of food and lots to love in her life.

But to me, the word “companion” indicates a bit more of an equal partnership, and as much as I love Glory, our relationship isn’t equal. I’m the one who gets all the food, who makes sure there is clean and plentiful water, who walks along beside her and cleans up her indiscretions in the yard and who vacuums up all the hair she sheds.

As you can tell from the photo that accompanies this column, it ain’t my hair I’m vacuuming up. If she wants an equal relationship, she needs to learn to run the vacuum cleaner.

And it would be nice to come home to a hot meal instead of finding her napping on the sofa. But that’s not the way these relationships work, so I’ll keep calling her a pet, if it’s just the same to you.

I have a lot more to say on this subject. But I need to run to the animal companion store.

We’re out of animal companion food.

Mitch Clarke is executive editor of The Times. His column appears Sundays. Read previous columns at gainesvilletimes.com/mitch.