<human>: My girlfriend and I are looking to move into a new apartment soon – specifically, one that allows dogs. We've been kind of growing keen to the idea of a dog for a while, but neither of us has really owned a dog per se (she did have a German Shepherd once when she was much younger, but she didn't take care of it herself IIRC). We have had experience with other pets – she had a cat until very recently and I have two rats. Furthermore, we will probably be getting another cat when we move as well, probably before we get a dog and not at the same time so that we don't have too much going on at once. It's probably worth noting somewhere in here that the GF is allergic, but she's willing to power through them – she knows she can because she did before when she was young and because she is also allergic to cats and powered through that for all the cats she's had.

We will be living in an apartment and I will be working 40 hour weeks once my job starts and she will be attending classes full time, so we will both probably be busy from 8:30 to 5:30 pretty consistently.

I have done some reading and found the bichon frise / bolognese recommended pretty frequently, but there aren't a ton of those coming up on the local adoption agency pages and I'm trying to figure out what else to look for. I'm a bit hesitant to go the mutt route only because I'm not sure how the separation anxiety thing will pan out.

Here are my direct questions:

* 1: Will the cat help the dog with separation anxiety during the day?
* 2: What kinds of dogs does reddit recommend for this kind of situation?

Can you condense the text into three sentences or less?
<bot>: GF and I are prospective first time dog owners wondering what to look for in a dog if we live in an apartment and have work week hours during the day.