Manipulating 'Animator' speed to control animation / events

Hi!

I'm using a single animated sprite as an icon in our game world. Initially the animation sits with

 animator.speed = 0;

till the user hovers over it, at which point it sets

 animator.speed = 1;

I then have an animation event on the last frame of the animation, which sets

 ticked = true;

The first frame then checks if 'ticked' is true and if it is, pauses the animation with

 animator.speed = 0;

What then happens however, is immediately hovering over the sprite makes it first the event on the last frame on the animation. From what I can tell, it runs the last frames event as soon as you set the speed to 0.

Am I going about this wrong? The functionality I want is for the animation to play through to the end while the using is hovering, reverse to the beginning if they move away and run a function if they make it to the end of the animation. I thought what I had would work, but the events just seem to fire willy nilly.

Any help appreciated! Script below for reference.

 void Start() {
     animator = gameObject.GetComponent<Animator>();
     animator.speed = 0;
 }
 
 void Update() {
     RaycastHit hit;
     bool isLookedAt = GetComponent<Collider>().Raycast(head.Gaze, out hit, Mathf.Infinity);

     if (isLookedAt && !looked) //if icon is hovered and not yet playing, play
     {
         looked = true;
         animator.speed = 1;

     }
     else if (!isLookedAt && looked) //if icon is playing but no hovered, stop
     {
         looked = false;
         animator.speed = -1;

     }

 }

 void endTrigger() //event on the last frame of the animation
 {
     open.SetActive(true);
     ticked = true;
 }

 void checkTrigger() //event on the first frame of the animation
 {
     if (ticked) {
         animator.speed = 0;
         ticked = false;
     }
 }