Dee Dee,
I agree with the others, and there is one more thing I thought to add which James touched on. Watch the background. Look at Tony's examples, the backgrounds are darker or the same as the subject. Your backgrounds had to many distracting bright areas. The Very bright areas detract from the esthetics and screw with the metering. You can expose for the girl and dog but then the bright background objects would get totally blown out. Get the morning or evening light, use your reflector, and fill flash some, and reduce the dynamic range of the shot by limiting the brightness of the background.