Magento Contact Us Form Data View from Admin

When using an observer for the event controller_action_postdispatch_contacts_index_post you can access the Post-Data via

public function controllerActionPostdispatchContactsIndexPost(Varien_Event_Observer $observer)
{
    $data = $observer->getData();
    $post = $data['controller_action']->getRequest()->getPost();
}

To listen for the event create the those nodes in the config.xml of your Module:

config/global/events/

<controller_action_postdispatch_contacts_index_post>
    <observers>
        <company_modulename_controller_action_postdispatch_contacts_index_post>
            <class>company_modulename/observer</class>
            <method>controllerActionPostdispatchContactsIndexPost</method>
        </company_modulename_controller_action_postdispatch_contacts_index_post>
    </observers>
</controller_action_postdispatch_contacts_index_post>

You are trying to find a troublesome drop in the middle of a river! I recommend to first confirm that everything is OK with your ORM using a workbench script:

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/plain);
error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
ini_set('display_errors',true);
include 'app/Mage.php';
umask(0);
Mage::setIsDeveloperMode();
Mage::app();

$model = Mage::getModel('training/animal');
$model->setData(
    'name' => 'Tony',
    'type' => 'tiger',
    'edible' => 'no'
);
$model->save();
print_r($model->getData()); //should have array values & auto-increment ID