[Susan Delgado]

I have read the Pern books and find the domestication of her dragons distasteful. They're just beasts of burden...

There's a good (as in effective) dragon in Barbara Hambly's Dragonsbane. I haven't read the sequels, so I don't know if she turned Morkeleb into something less effective, but in that one he was wise and wild and fallible.

I cannot believe no one has mentioned Earthsea! Le Guin has never written a bad word in her life, but her dragons there are exceptional. The closest thing that world has to higher beings.

These dragons are all sentient, though, For interesting dragons that are mainly wild animals, Melanie Rawn has written Dragon Prince, which is interesting, too, though the sequels were less so.

As for whether I think dragons are good or evil? Well, I'd have to say it depends on whose mind they come out of. In real life, of course, they are closest to Rawn's animals, but that's the nice thing about fantasy; you can do whatever you want and (within certain rather broad rules) you can't be wrong, because it's all a matter of opinion.