I don't think the dots have been touched in years. I use them a lot and haven't managed to break them in this particular way. The best freak out I can produce is when I apply a dot to the clothes instead of the target figure but it doesn't manifest with what you're seeing. Next time it happens could you send me the dot files. They're located in ...

%appdata%\Poser\12\English\dots

FYI, They're just .pz2 "pose" files. They use the same mechanism as a normal pose file.