[3.5] Animal Companion - Speak Language

[Bronk]

What I'm not seeing in that section, either, is wordage that would indicate the animal companion is a DM controlled NPC. It's even found in the chapter named 'Characters' rather than the one named 'Non Player Characters'

NPCs are everyone else in the world other than the PCs. An animal companion is not a PC. All NPCs are DM controlled.

As a DM, however, I agree that it would be a huge pain to do this for everything, and offloading control of animal companions and familiars in combat situations - and relaxing the rules about using handle animal tricks - helps quite a bit.