http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/apidocs/org/joda/time/format/DateTimeFormatter.html - there are few with* methods which affects how dates are parsed.

Talking about Android - it's an issue with performance(don't know if it's still actual for Joda 2.3 version) but it has simple solution http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5059663/android-java-joda-date-is-slow and http://daniel-codes.blogspot.com/2013/08/joda-times-memory-issue-in-android.html