The drought is driving up dog adoptions as rescue groups scramble to deal with a wave of abandoned working dog breeds.

Rescue groups Australian Working Dog Rescue and herd2home, which specialise in rehoming working dog breeds, say they have seen a surge in surrenders due to the drought.

Australian Working Dog Rescue national administration officer Cheryl Arsenault said the drought meant homeless dogs were pouring out of New South Wales and Queensland.

She said since January, the organisation had rehomed more than 300 dogs from NSW to other states, which did not include dogs rescued that had stayed in NSW.

"There's a lot more demand for dogs needing rescue, that's an Australia-wide problem," she said.

"Beautiful dogs, absolutely gorgeous dogs. A lot of people who take dogs from us say they can't imagine why they ended up in the pound."

Ms Arsenault thinks the financial hardships of drought make it harder to look after working dogs, while the fact that farmers in drought-affected areas were destocking meant there was less work for them.

No reprieve for rescue groups

Herd2home co-founder Perri Chappell said because of the number of dogs in need of rescue, there had not been the post-holiday season break usually experienced.

"We've definitely seen an increased number of dogs being dumped," she said.

Amaya is a border collie cross puppy in foster care with Australian Working Dog Rescue. ( Supplied: Australian Working Dog Rescue )

"Usually we get a reprieve from the pressure after the Christmas and holiday period, and we haven't felt that relax. It's just constant."

Ms Chappell said this drought period was different because they were now seeing working dogs that were still physically and mentally able to work being surrendered.

"Earlier in the year it was a bit more due to selling off stock … so the less experienced dogs were being surrendered," she said.

"Now we are directly seeing people can't afford to keep their dog. Their dog is just another mouth to feed.

"Something I've noticed this year is that we are getting requests to surrender to us working dogs that can actually work, whereas usually people would normally only be dumping those that have issues or can't work.

"We've had people saying 'We need to downsize our dogs, this one can work sheep, it can do this, it can do that, and we want it to go to the right home'."