Trying to find a set of books

Alright, so there's these set of books, don't know if it is a trilogy or not, that a friend of mine had read back in middleschool.  I'm scouring the web trying to figure out what it is going on a few vague details.

"There's like some young kid, and he may be male.  He lives in some place, and he's an orphan or something. Him and his friends take care of some dragons/dragonlike creatures.  They have to clean and perform first-aid on said dragons.  And one of the kids finds an egg, maybe, and he raises his own dragon, in secret, in some sort of desert, maybe.  Eventually when his dragon gets big enough he takes him to some city and take hims to fight in some sort of gladitorial competition, kinda like Poke'mon.  That's all I really remember."

So can you help me /book/?

That sort of reminds me of an ancient Anne McCaffrey book I read when I was a kid - I think it went something along those lines (and maybe the kid was the wrong gender to have a dragon or something?? - I remember the dragon was supposed to 'imprint' with it's owner by the owner being there when the egg hatched).  It was called Dragonflight IIRC

No, I don't believe it is in the Dragonriders of Pern series my Anne McCaffrey.  Any other similiarly related dragon fantasy novels that sort of fit this vague description.

I hastily typed that, had some errors, and forgot to thank you.  I commend you for the effort though.  We had wiki'd the Dragonriders of Pern and it turns out not to be it.. He thinks. 

i think it is... in the 1st book a girl is picked up to be the queen dragons carer and she becomes a dragon rider

Did this kid eventually have to climb into the corpse of the dragonlike creature and emerge from said corpse as a drago/human hybrid?

Actually, I think he say something about the kid cutting open the dragon and climbing into it.  Not sure about the drago/human hyrbrid thing, but he mentioned the corpse cutting/living.

yeah. I totally read this book when i was younger. It's scifi if i am remembering correctly and I do believe it was either written by Anne McCaffrey or maybe Jane Yolen.

That's it! It's the Pit Dragon Trilogy by Jane Yolen starting with  Dragon's Blood and then Heart's Blood followed by a book I've yet to read. Thanks a ton for your help!

np d00d :)