It is often a sad decision for farming families to retire their loyal huntaway or heading dog after years of mustering and yard work.
A charity called Retired Working Dogs said it has rehomed about 18,000 farming canines over the last decade, but a decline in the number of people adopting them this year means they will soon have to stop accepting them from farms.
The president, Marie-Claire Andrews, said there was a consistent supply of working dogs, but finding their forever homes was getting harder.
"We consistently have several hundred dogs - but the challenge we've got is our foster homes are full and we've slowed down over the last few months being actually able to re-home them. I think that's probably cost-of-living increases for people and a bit of stress on the home front."
She said it was gut wrenching, but the only other option for older working dogs if there weren't enough people wanting to adopt them was euthanasia.
Andrews said it was understandable farmers couldn't keep old dogs when they had a number of younger dogs doing the farm work as well.
"We have lots of different breeds of working dogs, with Huntaways being New Zealand's classic. We've also got collies and beardies and heading dogs. There's also pig dogs which are a mix of different breeds," Andrews said.
"But I adopted a pig dog four years ago and I live in a tiny house," she said. "There's plenty of room for him and he fits in just nicely. The amazing thing about them is that they are beautifully trained - the ones we have that are retiring. If I could I would have about 20 more!"
She says they are intelligent, obedient dogs and not difficult to handle.
"Some of the dogs are younger, as they just weren't interested in chasing sheep," she said.
She said, if needed, the farm dogs were house trained before being rehomed and they were all supplied with bedding and food.
