Dogs squeezing between their owners when they’re trying to have a cuddle on the sofa; enormous hounds believing they’re tiny little lap dogs and crushing your legs as they sit on you; tiny Jack Russells heaving whole tree branches through the park. We’ve all seen and chuckled over the behaviour of dogs, but if you’re cartoonist Rupert Fawcett, you take that humour up to another level.

Rupert, the creator of the celebrated Fred and Daddy cartoon series, has created Off The Leash, a poignant but hilarious look at the life of dogs. For a year and a half, Rupert has been posting up to seven original cartoons a week on his Facebook page, and gained himself 235,000 followers in the process, many of whom post up photos of themselves recreating his drawings with their dogs.

“I don’t necessarily get all my ideas from dogs,” admits Rupert, “a lot I get from observing human behaviour!

“I’ve grown up with dogs, although I don’t have one at the moment, and I see them every day, as we all do, and I just started having ideas about what they might be thinking if they had a human brain.”

The result is cartoons of dogs racing their owners upstairs to get the best spot on the bed, a dog deciding he is going to be magnificent today, and puppies realising they can get away with pretty much any amount of chaos and destruction because they’re so cute.

As well as these, Rupert has come up with more surreal scenarios: a perfume counter in a doggy department store selling fragrances such as Cow Pat in Paris and Dead Fox Fantasy, and a dog failing his induction into the canine special forces for being scared by a cat.

Rupert is a recent convert to the joys of social media – and it has completely revolutionised the way he does business. Gone are the days of doing a drawing, contacting an agent, going to the publisher and waiting to hear back if anything was going to be published, the process he went through with the famed Fred series in the 1990s.

“It took so long,” says Rupert, who lives in Barnes in southwest London, “and there was never any guarantee that it would be published. But social media is absolutely brilliant because you do the drawing, you scan it, you post it – and it’s instantly seen by thousands of people. It’s amazing to have that immediacy, you find out very quickly if people are interested or not.”

And people have been so interested that Rupert has created nearly 300 original drawings – 25 of which will be on display at Art You Grew Up With in Radlett from Saturday – and produced a book, Off The Leash – The Secret Life of Dogs, which he will be signing copies of on Saturday, ahead of its release in October.

“I had quite a lot of prints to choose from for the exhibition,” Rupert laughs. “Off The Leash has completely taken over my life.”

  • Off The Leash – The Secret Life of Dogs is at Art You Grew Up With from September 28 to October 14. Details: artyougrewupwith.com