Improving older photos

[pat3pee]

I came across these two pictures that I took with a simple PS camera in 2005 and made some small PP in ACR.
I especially darkened the distant hills with the graduated filter options but with the obvious increase in noise.

Although I like the feeling of these two shots, how could I make them better with what I have ?
Your C&C are welcome.

[FrankMi]

Hi Patrik. I think I would start by checking to see if the horizon is level, a common, but noticeable item.

In the first one you'll want to enhance the subject and minimize the rest but I'm not sure what you are using for the subject. The mountains are being overshadowed by the marsh which is in competition with the foreground grasses. As a result, none of these three elements are standing out as the composition's 'attention getter'.

In the second one, I would crop out the black pipe and let the image go to a 16x9 crop ratio.

[pat3pee]

You are right Frank, the way I enhanced the mountains in PP gives them equal attention to the foreground. The original photo hardly showed the mountains at all. And for the dogs photo, I had actually cropped away the black pipe but uploading to CiC I found it was there again.
THANKS