Hi All,
This is a question that I have always wanted to ask but always thought I knew the answer to, you see, you can't teach me anything :D my boy always stretches whenever I have been out and come back in, in the mornings when I come down to him, but the peculiar thing is, he does it whenever he seems stressed or after he wakes up and just wants to confirm where I am. In fact, he does it all of the time apart from when he is with me constantly. If I ask him does he want his dinner, he always runs up and down and asks me verbally for it, but again.....stretches. I have had GSDs for 22 years and yes, they stretch when you greet them as a form of greeting but that is normally it. But he is not a GSD and I don't know that it matters what breed it is,it must just be an individual thing. I know, looking at wolf packs, the subserviant members do it to the alpha dog,but this is just on meeting up. My boy is not what I would class as particularly subserviant so why does he do it?? Any one else on here notice the same behaviour in their dogs?

It sounds like a Calming Signal to me - wolves perform calming signals as well

Hi, my GSD does this all the time also, sounds exactly the same as my dog...dunno why though

hi,my akita-inu does this all the time too,she stays in the house when i am at work,so whenever i come home,she sees me coming up the path and the first thing that she does is stretch untill she is nearly flat out.She also does this first thing in the morning's.One morning i came down the stairs and opened the door to take her out,she stretched right out and i fell over the top of her....it was 5:30am!!!

hi,
    My eldest bully does it too,again dont know why though?

                              sam