Neck stretching

Question
I have a 3 yr schnauzer who for the last 2 years has been stretching his neck sometimes so far back he almost topples over, he appears to be sniffing at the same time. I have taken him to 3 different vets to try to find out why he does this as sometimes he shows great distress. He always does it more than once when he starts and he also does it when I clean his eyes but does it frequently during the course of the day when it doesn't seem to have been triggered by anything in particular. Can you offered a solution, please.

Answer
Usually when they are doing something like this they are trying to sniff some part of their anatomy that they cannot reach.  Any lumps or bumps? Has he been checked for ear infections or tooth problems? Those would be the two places I would check out first... certainly anything around his head or neck.

He reminds me of what I call a "nurse dog". These dogs are the first to notice that something is wrong with someone else in the pack (be it people or dogs), and when I had mine, he was 100% reliable in telling me that someone (including myself) had something going on that needed attention. If you had two dogs, he would be in there helping you clean those eyes, ears, mouth, etc.

An ear infection should be easy for the vet to find, an abcessed tooth not always so easy. I scale teeth on my dogs and on clients. One dog came in for grooming, when I cleaned his teeth, he didn't want me touching one of his molars (and he had always been good about tooth scaling before). I told the owner about this, and sometime later she finally took him into the vet to have this checked out. The vet said everything looked great, but he did an X-ray and discovered that abcessed tooth.

Good luck with this! Puzzles are not always fun.