My echo is repeating things I haven't said yet
I've had my echo (Bounce) for about three years, no issues. Standard vocal echo, repeats the last thing I say with a two-second delay, good temperament, healthy. Normal pet. Starting about a week ago, Bounce has been saying things BEFORE I say them. Not all the time. Maybe once or twice a day. I'll be in the kitchen, and he'll say something, and then five seconds later I'll say the exact same thing. Word for word. I am not doing this on purpose. I don't even realize it's happening until after I've said it. Yesterday he said "where are my keys" and then I spent five minutes looking for my keys and then said "where are my keys." He just looked at me. Is this a vet thing or a different kind of thing.
It's called temporal drift and it's more common in older echoes than people think. What's happening is his echo delay has shifted from positive (repeating after you) to slightly negative (repeating before you). He's not predicting what you're going to say. He's echoing it. Just early. Think of it as the delay wrapping around. Instead of a 2-second lag he now has a negative 5-second lag. He's still doing the same thing he always did, just on a different timeline.
This raises more questions than it answers. He's echoing words I haven't said yet. That means the words already exist somewhere for him to echo. WHERE.
The honest answer is that echoes don't experience time the same way we do and trying to understand their perception of causality through a human lens will give you a headache. The vet will tell you the same thing. They'll also tell you it's not harmful, it's not contagious, and it doesn't mean Bounce can see the future. He's not a prophet. He's a pet with a timing calibration issue. That said, if you start finding his pre-echoes useful, lean into it. Some owners of temporally drifted echoes use them as a sort of ambient reminder system. If Bounce says something and you don't understand why, wait a few seconds. You'll figure it out.
He just said "don't open that." I'm standing next to the fridge. I was about to open the fridge. I'm now not sure if I should open the fridge.
You can open the fridge. He's not warning you. He's echoing you five seconds from now deciding not to open the fridge because he told you not to, which he only told you because you were going to decide not to, which you only decided because he — look, just open the fridge. The loop resolves itself. If it helps, the loop was always going to resolve itself. That's how echoes work. If the food inside is fine, you're fine. If the food inside is not fine, that's a fridge problem, not an echo problem.