Without going into conspiracy theories, I think it's possible...

Without going into conspiracy theories, I think it's possible that they got their data, decided to end the trial believing their data met the criteria for a deal of some kind, but sent it to Elanco to gauge their reaction and willingness to negotiate. They obviously weren't impressed enough to offer a great deal but said don't be a stranger (probably not to the great surprise of management who already knew they could get better results with optimized dosing) and mgmt now has a clear direction of just what % of dogs they need to win Elanco over. Elanco probably would have let them know sooner if they hadn't had their hands full with the Bayer buyout. If that's true, I feel a little bit mislead but not outright lied to. I do believe it's valuable progress, but people saying there's a takeover brewing right now are dreaming imo. Lets hope they've been busy in the lab figuring out targeted dosing so they can run a new trial asap and knock it out of the park with what they learned from round one.