If you and your four or five people can come up with a safe, humane solution to the dragon problem, then by all means, let's use it. Fighting and killing it still carries risk, even for experienced people, and the land may easily be damaged in the fight.
But I can tell you right now that transforming it into another animal entirely or making it smaller is inhumane, and I won't allow it. If you're morally opposed to psychologically distressing the beast, you don't change its form that way. We can acknowledge that it's a threat to be removed without disrespecting its nature and putting it in needless agony by making it something it isn't.