Washington, DC (AP) - A senate fact-finding comittee announced Thursday that it has found canine companionship may, in some cases, be detrimental to the learning process for pre-teens who spend time with their dogs.

"The fact that man's best friend is...not man's best friend, is hard for a lot of people to swallow", said a group spokesman. "Various studies now brought to light show, however, that people who grow close to their pets or have access to a neighborhood pet while young may suffer from learning disabilities and poor grades."

The group pointed to a recent UCLA study in which 1,098 people were tracked from childhood up to the present. It found that fully 58% of those who "played with or had reasonable access to" a dog performed significantly worse in standardized math and reading scores nationwide. "There appears to be a consistant correlation across the data", said Michael Dowles, a leading researcher, "that those children who either had a close relationship with reptiles -- or had no significant pet figure at all -- outperformed those who favored dogs, or to a lesser extent, cats."

This news comes as a shock to some. "I had no idea!", exclaimed Jennifer Hazier, a Florida resident and long-time pet lover. "It sounds awful, but my kids were real loosers in school. And now I'm wondering if it was the pets all along. Because we had dogs, three Chows, and we went everywhere with them! I mean, camping, jogging -- even shopping. We loved it. It would be terrible to realize that it was the dogs all along."

Senate Majority leader Tom Dashle pointed to the existance of previous reports as early indicators of the problem, but says such reports were largely disregarded. "People laughed at them", he said. "The pet stores and pet supply organizations - and even the Humane Society, somewhat - were clearly not interested in bringing this out into the open. Fully sixty-seven percent of American households keep dogs, and if people once realized the it was the dog that was causing all these problems, such organizations would go bankrupt."

When asked about possible steps, Senator Dashle replied that legislation would have to be put in place to lessen the neagtive effects of dogs on society. "We, as a nation, have been victimized by large pet-related organizations that have sought to enrich themselves at our expense", he said. "For the past several years, fingers were pointed in all the wrong places in attempts to lay blame for the poor performance of American schools. I mean, look! The Republican Right has always tried to say that the so-called 'collapse of parential responsibility', the lowering of standards in schools was to blame for the educational downturn. Obviously, they were wrong. Our schools, it turns out, are to be in fact lauded for their performance under such circumstances."

He said that further research was necessary, of course, but that legislation was being worked out that would limit unsupervised exposure of children under age ten to canine pets.

Several states are working on a class-action lawsuit that would seek reparation from pet companies for "shameless exploitation" of people's natural affinity for dogs. "We are victims, all of us", said an unidentified New Jersey spokeswoman for the lawsuit. "It's time justice was done."

President George Bush sighed audibly when asked about whether he would sign a pet-limiting bill. "It worries me, sometimes," he said. "Americans like to be victims. And some people are so...

...so gullable..."