The Date format changed from PostgreSQL 6.5.2 to 7.0+.

Here is the solution we have found to make it act like before for those
people who are expecting the date to come out as 10-10-2000 and not
2000-10-10.

There are 2 options:

1) session only: issue the "SET datestyle TO 'POSTGRES,US';" from inside
your program.

2) system wide setting:  in /etc/profile add

export PGDATESTYLE='POSTGRES,US'

then restart postgresql and the backend will default to the US datestyle. 
Any sessions started via psql, etc. will use the US datestyle until you
issue a SET datestyle command to change it to something else.

Hope this helps anyone who has been bit by this.