Two schedules for one breed
The honest answer for a Standardbred is two answers. In race training, the farrier is part of the training team and the horse's feet are attended to every four to six weeks, sometimes with small adjustments between full resets during a racing campaign. Off the track — as a riding horse, a driving pleasure horse or a retired companion — the same horse settles onto the standard rhythm that suits nearly all horses: a trim every six to eight weeks, whether shod or barefoot. Which schedule applies is decided entirely by the work the horse is doing now, not by the job it was bred for.
Why racing shoeing runs tighter
Harness racing is performed at speed in a strict gait — the trot or the pace — and a Standardbred's shoeing is engineered around keeping that gait clean. Farriers adjust hoof angles, breakover and shoe weight to influence how each leg swings and lands, and a trotter that starts brushing or interfering is often a shoeing conversation before it is anything else. Training miles on track surfaces also wear steel fast. Let that package run long and the angles the whole setup was built on quietly change, which is why racing barns treat the farrier's visit as immovable and the horse's gait notes as part of the training record.
The pleasure Standardbred's feet
Retired racehorses are famous for making calm, willing riding horses, and their feet are usually straightforward: good horn, a sensible shape, and no need for anything exotic. A trim every six to eight weeks keeps the toe back and the heels level; many go barefoot happily once they are out of race plates, though the transition deserves a farrier's eye over the first couple of cycles as the foot remodels to its new job. If your pleasure horse drives as well as rides, mention both jobs to the farrier, since a driving horse pushes off its hind feet differently from a ridden one.
Watching the feet between visits
Whatever the schedule, pick the feet out daily and look at how the horse moves on a hard surface once a week. For the horse in training, report any change in gait, a shoe that feels loose or a clench standing proud to the trainer and farrier straight away rather than waiting for the booked visit — at racing speed, small foot changes become big ones quickly. For the pleasure horse, the same weekly once-over catches flares, cracks and early thrush while they are still one-trim problems.
Care Teams in KinsLe means each farrier task can be given to trainer, owner or helper in turn, that person notified, and finished work timestamped, so a horse changing hands never loses its place in the cycle.