Central Coast Herding Dog Rescue is a small group, with volunteers busy trying to care for and place the few dogs we have been able to rescue ourselves. We don't have time to help find dogs for people, other than the listings on our website of dogs we are fostering or are aware of. Instead, we offer this list of resources to help you do your own search.
There are many organizations out there dedicated to herding breed rescue and adoption. Owners also advertise their dogs directly if they are trying to rehome them. Below are links and tips to help you find available dogs.
Since you presumably want a specific breed or breed mix, start with a google search. "Border Collie Rescue California," for example, will get you most of the major border collie rescue groups, including us but also the bigger ones, such as Border Collies in Need (www.bordercolliesinneed.org) and Border Collie Rescue of California (www.bcrescue.net). You can apply the same parameters for different breeds and different states and countries, of course. Also be aware, some of these breed rescue groups may list mixed breeds as well as dogs of associated breeds -- so you might find that adorable cattle dog you've wanted at a border collie rescue website!
Another approach, which will find you listings of dogs at participating private and public shelters, is Petfinder, at www.petfinder.com. This site allows you to search by breed and area, so that you can search, say, for Australian Shepherds in a 100 mile radius starting from your home zip code. Do note -- there tends to be minimal information about the dogs, due to the limited space on the site. And of course sometimes the dogs are not the breed type that the shelter thinks they are, since shelter staff may be going on guesswork. And not all shelters use Petfinder.
Another, less well known, shelter clearinghouse is Petharbor (www.petharbor.com). Petharbor is the site used by most of the public shelters in California; their individual databases link up, so as they add dogs to their own computers, the dogs show up at the Petharbor website too. It's not as friendly a search engine as Petfinder, but it will have every dog that is in a given shelter's database, so if you want to see if there are any herding breed type dogs at the shelters in your area, you can use Petharbor to look at every dog they currently have.
There's also Adopt-a-Pet (http://www.adoptapet.com). It's the least known of the three, but worth a look!
For dogs being rehomed by their owners, and for smaller local rescue groups that may not have their own websites or use the clearinghouses, always check Craigs List (www.craigslist.org). The down side is that you may be dealing with inexperienced or unreliable individuals, as opposed to established rescue organizations. On the other hand, you may find a dog whose owners are responsible, and who are very knowledgeable about the dog and its history -- and you may well get a great dog that way!
Finally, check signs at pet stores and feed supply stores; those are often places where people put up posters to place herding breed dogs!
Thank you for considering rescue -- where all the best dogs come from!